Like Serpents Trying to Feel Warmth
by DasCheesenborgir
Summary: 1935. It's a cold Spring in Gallia, and it's not just because of the rain.
1. 1 Crosstalk

_-dark clouds-_

 _-advancing-_

 _-torrential-_

 _-massacre-_

 _-severe flooding-_

 _-bloody-_

 _-rain, and it certainly doesn't look like it's letting up anytime soon! Definitely not over in Vasel at least, and lemme tell you folks anyone with a pair of eyes-_

 _-completely burnt out, l-like... this was my home for the past three years! And it was all just swept away-_

 _-a hell of a brewing storm, if our correspondent has anything to say about it. We're still in this fight folks, and don't forget-_

 _-the atrocities those bastards are cutting across our land! They_ _ **laughed at us, while they cut us down like flies! Those fucking mon-**_

 _-Militia Squad 7 in particular-_

 _-_ _ **Killers! Murderers!-**_

 _-the Regular Army that had experienced firsthand the horror at Ghirlandaio-_

 _ **-All of them! All of us! Butchers! I hope-**_

 _-endure nefarious sabotage by the loathsome Imperial army that unleashed a cloud of-_

 _-It was like… I'd heard stories. None of it could have prepared me for the real thing. Gods…-_

 _-_ _ **They're all fucking liars! Where the fuck do you think they got the gas in the first place, it was a fucking inside job! We had a whole goddamn stockpile of it right underneath-**_

 _-our attention, to the brave-_

 _-_ _ **MURDERERS!-**_

 _-Damn it, no! Get the hell away from me, I don't want to-_

 _-fight on, for-_

 _ **-for a swift end to**_ _-_

 _-this-_

 _-…pointless, goddamn war…_


	2. 2

**Rewritten prologue.**

 **0-0-0**

It was a glorious day, they had said. The sun had shone over dried blood on that day, illuminated festering bodies and smoking husks of buildings in a golden radiance. They reveled in the light, cared not for the plates of metal that burdened them so as they ate and drank, jovially but modestly, as they would've any other day at the academy.

He'd shot a child that day, in the hours prior to their victory. He couldn't even tell it aside from the fleeing town watchmen at the time; they'd been naught but silhouettes in the smoke, all of them mere targets. It was his first kill on the battlefield, a single well-aimed shot guided with steady hand. It would've made his drill instructors proud. And so he ate, and drank with his comrades that day.

He'd shot another child today. He had seen the terror etched into the boy's face, heard the screams of their mother as he'd towered over them. He'd felt the way their skin clung to their bones as he hefted them into body bags, pried away their fingers from each other's forms. He'd shot them from a mere three feet away, after much hesitation. He had missed the first shot. His hands had trembled. He'd emptied the entire rifle clip, all seven remaining shots, into just the two of them.

It would not have made his drill instructors proud. It was raining outside today as well.

There had been no celebration to be had.

Today, he had been greeted by his squad's Sergeant, as opposed to his friends from the academy; they had been long been reassigned to the quickly advancing frontline while his own squad remained in the town ruins to await reinforcements.

They had jeered that the war would be over by the time his squad moved out of the town. He had been deflated to hear that at the time, for to that day he had still only killed the one boy.

Today, he stood underneath a rickety outcrop of planks with his Sergeant in the drizzle, waiting for the rains to subside so they could carry the body bags of the mother and boy he'd killed to the graves they'd made up on a hilltop outside of town. The ashen incense of his Sergeant's cigarettes melded poorly with the still tangy scent of blood lingering in his nostrils. It tainted the once-comforting smell of damp cobblestone.

Today, he did not smile contently under his helm, did not keep his shoulders squared and his head held high. Today, he dared to question the purpose of the Army, dared to wonder how he'd come so far; from shooting mounds of dirt in the sunlit training yards, to shooting children in rain-drenched lands.

He did not care that any proper officer would reprimand him for thinking such things. The words tumbled out from his drying mouth into the cold rain with no grace or control; he shivered under his armor, chilled flesh quivering under the damp leathers and dulled plates of his armor, as he struggled to keep his voice level.

His Sergeant did not reprimand him. His Sergeant stood, leaned against the wall, and merely listened while smoking his cigarettes. He didn't bother to speak much at all, but nodded along, and every so often grunted in bitter agreement.

It was a small comfort to be had, under the clouds and crater-pocked roofings. The words that came from his Sergeant's mouth when he'd finished, panting and sweating and trembling with exertion, brought about a strange calmness in his racing mind.

They were all just pawns on a board, the Sergeant had said, nameless puppets moved around by tacticians and politicians. They were grey, and their enemies were blue. There were no children or families on chess boards.

And so it was that he straightened his back again, squared his shoulders.

His lips settled into a flat line; it mattered little though, for nobody would ever be able to see it past his helm.

Nobody, no matter how much they lost themselves in the lens of a scope to watch him, how tightly they tracked his movements, could ever see beyond the grey armor that encased him.

He was glad that his Sergeant had been given the chance to impart that upon him before a bullet pierced his head. It made his own last moments of existence that much more bearable.

His name was Private. He was only 17 when he died that day.


	3. 3

**The issue of copyright recently gave me a real scare actually lol. Always felt kinda weird putting in disclaimers like this for something as pretty as fanfiction but the law's the law I guess**

 **Never really occurred to me, since I figured proper filing and archiving of stories would usually handle stuff like this, but there wasn't exactly a listing for Kerberos Panzer Cop for filing crossovers under. So... yeah. It's a crossover, with the aforementioned source material. As in, there's major elements in the story lifted directly from there which I don't own.**

 **0-0-0**

He remained up in his inconspicuous loft for a while longer, perched within the charred remains of a child's bedroom. Thick drops of water filtering through the soaked wood boards overhead splashed down upon the rounded scalp of his helmet with light taps that came around just off-beat enough to form an unpredictable sound pattern that stuck out in the quiet cascade of rain.

At the very least the birds had stopped, moved on to carry their staccato tunes elsewhere. It had all been quite distracting, really.

His red-tinted gaze scanned over the adjacent buildings, the alleyways snaking between them, the windows. There wasn't much to see, nothing immediately significant at least, no signs of movement.

Briefly, he even re-immersed himself within the warping lenses of his rifle scope to check over the shattered silhouette of the town's two windmills in the distance, scanning over the calloused and water-slicked surface of their superstructures for anything out of place that might've indicated another sniper taking up a so very tempting vantage point up in those lofty heights. There wasn't anything except for the still corpse of the one marksman he'd disposed of minutes ago, leaning back against the stone grotesquely almost as though they were just lounging there, high above the world.

Nothing to be seen. Time ticked away in minutes, the statistical probability of there being any enemy presence beyond what they'd initially observed to react to the slaying of the comrades dwindling with each minute that went by.

Even so, ten minutes was the operational standard. And in a situation like this, they couldn't afford to cut corners.

He found himself always circling his view back around to the two bodies on the street. They were, after all, the only things he picked out that wore the telltale plated uniform of Imperial soldiers.

Even with that misty mirage of swirling water droplets over the cobblestone, it couldn't hide the lifeless bodies splayed out upon it. Not to him, anyhow- it was probably even easier to see for others. The sickly pink of their blood mixing with the rainwater, he imagined, would seem a fairly outstanding sight amongst the grey stone. Or had it been more of a tan color? It didn't really matter, he supposed. If he could see it in monochrome maybe it had nothing to do with the color contrast at all.

A short, high-pitched _beep_ rang out in his ears, the normally soft noise amplified by the curved carapace of his face.

He gave the street one last look-over, tallied up the body count one more time.

No other targets in sight. Area secure.

A certain stiffness had wormed its way into the joints under his armor and suit, he realized, as he roused himself from his prone stillness. Subconsciously, he flexed his black fingers ever so slightly while he worked to retract his rifle from the carefully placed rubble clustered around it. The pair of spent bullet casings he gathered up from the molded floorboards around him felt like feathers in his right hand. A soft scrape filled his ears as he raised the black surface of his weapon out from the motley assortment of rock and scraps of grime-streaked cloth it had been festering in.

A little dully tinted sweater, shrapnel pockmarking its wool weave slid away from the rifle barrel. Some grimy remnants of some sort of animal doll, he had to brush that aside. The fur had matted itself to the casing, in particular a stubby clump that might've once been an arm.

He took significantly less care in clearing up that impromptu camouflage, just sweeping it away from the little hole punched through the wall in the corner he'd holed himself up in and scattering it along the floorboards.

A brief spike in light flooded his vision as he rose up from the sheltered corner of his perch, his form now cresting over what remained of the room's outer wall. Subtle as the shift in perspective was, it was still quite a little jarring now that he was presented with a far wider and unfiltered view of it all. It certainly seemed quite a bit smaller through the small, jagged porthole he'd been looking out of for the past hours.

He stalked over to the now splintered wooden frame of a window. Pocketing the two spent bullet casings he'd collected in a pouch on his belt, he reached out and swept aside a few scraps of dangling curtains that were dancing out in the mild wind. His gloved hands snapped out for them once they bristled back from the outside, slick black fingers clamping down on their perforated surface. It didn't take much to tear them away from their rusted hinges.

Those fluttering obstructions were cast aside back inside the room, far enough to be sheltered from the elements. With that dealt with, he began to survey the structures across the street in more detail- in particular, he began to pick up on some subtle splotches of recent conflict scattered throughout now that the billowing mists of rain had lightened some.

Bullet holes sparsely pockmarking stonework, a few scant splashes of rust red blood. It would've looked like the Imperials had actually done an admirable job of cleaning up if he hadn't also noticed the sacks of cloth heaped up unceremoniously in the alley off to the side. He hadn't noticed before, the corners of his porthole having certainly restricted his field of view at the time.

Round and unblinking eyes caught the telltale protrusion of a limb from those lumps of burlap in the shadow of the buildings. It was a small and delicate arm, stubby little fingers coated over with grime and blood. It wouldn't have been too much of a stretch to imagine that arm might've once been perched on the now-broken windowsill he stood before.

He guessed the downpour had made it impossible to cremate all those corpses- if he had to wager a guess from the location and relatively small number of bodies- an exact pair of them including the child it seemed- it was likely the result of a more recent struggle as well.

His gaze knowingly trailed over to the neighbouring building, just another residence house like the rest. Past the craters that lined its structure and the broken windows however, he saw the little marks that had been engraved into his mind from the mission details. A dimmed lamp lying on its side out on the staircase leading up to its door, its twisting metal frame coalescing together at the top into a spiral handle, a single article of clothing now shredded by stray gunfire and the elements dangling from a clothesline bridging it and the neighbouring house, a pink mark on the crumpled hull of the mailbox outside.

He glanced back at the bodies, the implication of it all fairly clear. Their contact was dead. Unfortunate, but hardly unexpected.

The fibrous black sheath of his arms made no noise as he reached up with his right hand and keyed in the radio communicator grafted in with his face. Only a few incomprehensible wisps of his voice would leave the bared teeth of his mask, and that itself would be lost to the winds outside. To himself, however, the sound of his own voice reverberating in his head was almost jarring after such extended silence.

"Captain, I've found some body bags. Two. Alleyway neighbouring the cuckoo's nest."

A pregnant pause followed, the light ring of static mixing with the pattering rain outside as his report was mutilated and reconstructed before being presented to the disembodied voice on the other end of the line. He felt a twitch in his left thumb, the brief motion eliciting a quiet _squeak_ of cloth on metal as his thumb glided over the surface of his rifle handle.

Two seconds passed.

His Captain would need time to digest the information, he reasoned, cobble together the report and update his mental map of the situation before issuing a new order. Words were precious on the radio, the Lieutenant once told him. The fewer they used, the less chance there was of something going wrong.

Three seconds.

The Lieutenant certainly didn't seem to mind making an exception of that rule when addressing the Sergeant though. That always seemed to amuse the latter.

Four seconds.

He, the Corporal, instinctively snapped to attention as a burst of sound flared in his ears and cleared aside to make way for the gravelly and filtered voice of his commanding officer. It boomed out with stoic clarity, strangely comforting in the same sense of how the cold numbed one's body to all feeling.

"Understood. What about enemy contact?"

"Neutralized."

Yet another pause. In rare moments of reprieve he sometimes wondered exactly how it all worked. The radio, that was. The Lieutenant would occasionally offer some insight into it through murmurings as he worked.

Though as usual, he didn't have much time to continue plodding along that line of thought, the Captain's voice slicing through such irrelevant musings and gently nudging him back to reality.

"The Sergeant will be with you shortly. Hold position until then."

"Yes, Captain."

With a click, the static buzzing ceased. He held his position.

The soft sprinkle of rain continued on outside, the few stray drops that did drift through the jagged opening he stood by bristling quietly against his armor.


	4. 4

The Sergeant's eventual arrival was, the Corporal reflected, perhaps… unexpectedly silent, to most others. The soldier's physical presence didn't suggest he would bother to move with any such subtlety, but, then again, that applied to all of them in their own way he supposed- _had_ to considering their role.

He glanced up from his aimless study of the snaking patterns of bloodied water lingering around his boots, the faded rosy tint of it actually even more muted now that he'd switched off the blazing crimson filter on his eyes. It was all quickly smothered by the Sergeant's looming shadow anyways.

The masked officer, clad in a seamless mesh of black plate and black cloth and holding the mechanically sleek length of a machine gun at level his waist, didn't so much as stride through the sheets of falling rain so much as phase through it. His boots marched silently over the stone at a practiced pace that radiated neither meek gentleness nor blundering military might, the utter void of noise left in his wake doing nothing to reflect the heavy gear that adorned him.

He addressed the Corporal with slight gesture to the nearby bodybags, mechanical filters in his mask twisting the already unpleasantly grizzled voice beneath.

"That her over there then?"

"Unsure. I've yet to investigate the site."

There was a brief moment of verbal silence, seconds at most, as the Sergeant glared wordlessly at him, whether simply evaluating the situation with the minimal information he was given or considering reprimanding him for lack of initiative.

Truth be told, the Corporal had considered whether he should move in to confirm the bodies personally beforehand, to save them all that little bit of time- but the Captain had not explicitly ordered him to do so. With such a delicate task as disposing evidence (even if it would undoubtedly be in an… incendiary manner, if the Sergeant was called to handle it) he decided it would be best to avoid interfering in the process at all.

"Well," sighed the Sergeant as he slung his weapon around his shoulder- the length of the machine gun suddenly even more apparent as it stood nearly as tall as he did from stock to barrel. "Might as well give it a look before we go about demolishing the building."

He paused before moving to do just that, briefly diverting his gaze to the two Imperial corpses festering in the rosy water of the street. "The hell is this supposed to be, some sort of new age art display? Get those bodies piled up by the house."

"Yes sir."

And then he brushed past the Corporal, gliding out of view with practiced strides.

The Corporal himself was left standing blankly for a moment, almost as though he had to stop and re-register the two bodies still sprawled out on the street. He noticed that the one soldier that had been unmasked at the time of death was visibly drained of colour by now, cheeks sickly white, curled lips a dried and cracked pink. Water was pooling in the corpse's tobacco blackened maw. It almost looked like it was smiling.

He heard the fallen soldier's gravelly voice echo out again in the recesses of his mind, but he couldn't seem to recall, couldn't seem to parse, the words that had given him slight pause before shooting earlier, from the murk of memory. Maybe that was a good thing. Anything that could stop him from shooting was better left forgotten.

And then he too was moving, shouldering his rifle and striding forth with the same muffled ease that he only recently began to take any notice of- which was a strange thought, he mused, taking notice of something that was not meant to be taken note of.

He could hear something now, tiny and soft splashes left in the wake of his boots above the natural drizzling rain. A very slight squeak of leather on armor as he eased the strap of his rifle over his shoulder. The actual tenseness of everything under his armored skin, bundles of synthetic fibre and cloth all very… coiled up, shifting and holding with controlled precision-

-it was all quite distracting really. The strange… feeling… left as quickly as it had come, and he did not dare will it back to contemplate it all further.

He was already standing over the two bodies now. He bent down, gloves reaching out and grasping the corpse of the unmasked soldier under its arms in a smooth and practiced motion. Some pooling rainwater spilled out from its mouth as he lifted up its bulk, a little ribbon of fresh red blood spurting out from the jagged hole torn through its neck.

The soaked leathers covering its legs dragged a diluted trail of fading pink across the ground that was washed away in seconds.

He heard a bitter chuckle from behind him in the alley, back where the Sergeant was standing. It was followed by a quiet shuffle of cloth as the officer presumably inspected the bodybags more closely.

" _Fuckin' idiot…"_

He set the body of the Imperial down with a muted ring of its dull grey helmet tapping against a stone stair, glancing back towards the Sergeant as he did so.

The Sergeant went about his work with little delicacy, casting aside the corpse of the dead child draped over that of their contact as though it were little more than a clump of dirty rags. "It's her alright," he called out, as though sensing the Corporal's gaze upon him without having to look up. "Dumb heap of shit and her kid, it looks like. Radio transmitter and encryption codes right on her body too."

He punctuated that last remark by tossing aside the contraption in question, the little bundle of wires and mechanisms encased in a sleek black box used by the formless voice of their superiors to instruct their various third party agents. Clearly, Command had chosen their contact poorly this time.

"Have we been compromised?"

That elicited a borderline cackle from the Sergeant. The static filter cast upon such laughter made it even more eerily chafing.

"Those two bucketheads you just wasted couldn't even figure out how to zip up a bodybag correctly, let alone search the bodies themselves first. You think even if they found this shit they would've bothered to report it?" He supposed that was true. If they'd found something surely they would've acted more urgently to report that to some sort of higher command?

He glanced back down at the corpse slumping against the stairs, head tilted down with a slumped slackness that seemed almost a grotesque mirror of the glimpse he'd caught of the man's uncaring demeanor in life.

"No. I suppose not. Sergeant."

"Doesn't really matter anyway," grunted the Sergeant as he hoisted the body of their contact, its form obscured by lumps of thick cloth, over one shoulder. He bent down to pluck up the child and transmitter with his other arm. "They're all dead now and are about to be reduced to another neat pile of ashes. Another quick and clean job well done." The Sergeant chuckled, as though he'd made some sort of grand joke- the Corporal certainly didn't catch it.

"I guess we're lucky the Lieutenant knows his way around his toys. Roads are probably muddy as shit now but a bumpy offroad truck ride'll be a helluva lot more welcoming than hauling around a gas canister for another week."

The Corporal managed to pick out another layer to the Sergeant's voice this time, beneath the gravelly barb of his crude speech. It sounded quite drained. Like an undercurrent of physical exhaustion, almost. The Corporal supposed that was reasonable enough. The Sergeant had shouldered the hefty weight of the Ragnite Gas canister for the majority of their march from the now smoldering armory of Ghirlandaio; maybe the renewed weight of corpses slung over his shoulder was reminding him of his tiredness.

Any disposition the Corporal might've had to explore those thoughts further were swiftly swept aside as the Sergeant brushed past him, as though he wasn't even there. The sudden passing of his shadowed form was what ultimately stirred the Corporal from his blank trance of observation.

The bodies fell out of the veteran commando's grip rather uncaringly, their cloth-burdened flesh smacking against the staircase roughly next to the fa- _mask_ less Imperial soldier. Before the Corporal could move to retrieve the other corpse, the Sergeant had already decided to do so himself, striding over and sweeping up its dull armored bulk before walking back and swiftly dumping it off with as much ceremony as he'd afforded the other bodies.

He didn't say anything else then, just reached around to his back and extracted a well-machined brick of light grey matter from his pack. And then he stopped, ruby glare noticing that the Corporal was still standing dumbly by the bodies.

"What the hell you standing around for? Get away from the fucking house, you wanna be incinerated with the rest of them?"

The Corporal moved away from the fucking house.

As the Sergeant had promised, the bodies were reduced to little more than ash in the rain a few seconds later. By the time the charge set had gone off, he and the officer were well on their way to regroup with the rest of their squad. Even moving along in silence, their armored forms gliding through the rain, he barely even registered the distant flare of blue light and dull _thump_ through the renewed downpour.


	5. 5

"We're coming around the corner, windmill side. Hold your fire."

The Sergeant's voice crackled in his ears, momentarily breaking the sputtering rhythm of mechanical coughs echoing out in the misty air. The Captain's response followed quickly this time, but as sparse in words and curt as it always was; just a simple acknowledgement, nothing more.

The uneven churning of what the Corporal soon identified to be an engine momentarily ceased, before returning as more of a continuous rumble.

The Corporal followed in the Sergeant's wake as they indeed rounded the corner of the washed out base of the house to their right. Behind them, further in the distance, the town's twin windmills towered over them, casting a gloomy shadow over the already poorly lit clearing they walked into; the faint blue glow emanating from the opened hood of a truck sitting adjacent to the sundered husk of a Gallian tank seemed to be the only splash of colour visible among the grey expanse of their surroundings.

It cast an almost ghostly aura around the Captain's black cloaked figure as he stood idly by, the black plate of his armor and thick cloth of the coat beneath it reflecting a just barely noticeable fraction of the blue light. The Ragnite gas canister laid horizontally on the stone before his boots. The blank visage of his mask swivelled over to them to only briefly acknowledge them with a nod before returning to survey the truck.

Or rather the Lieutenant, who currently stood over the sputtering engine of the vehicle, armored figure hunched over, attention fixated solely on the failing machine. He'd been busy, that much was evident; even the driver-side door hung loosely open on rusting hinges, giving them all a clear view of the conglomeration of electrical innards spilling out from the compartments underneath the steering wheel.

The Sergeant spared little time in addressing their squad's combat engineer.

"So, Lieutenant, are you done playing fucking Frankenstein with the truck or not?"

Normally, that would've brooked a reprimand befitting of the image of the stern officer that their Lieutenant put forth; at least initially. A curt warning to observe the strict radio communication formalities put forth by covert operations doctrine, with only a smidgen of annoyance worming its way into the intonation of it; only then, would the responses gradually degrade into far more crass and volatile remarks as the Sergeant continued to make casual quips between intervals of silence that could range anywhere from minutes to hours.

But even then, such exchanges appeared to be rare enough, at least from what the Corporal observed.

That didn't change how jarring he found it though; even just the first time he'd heard the two clash, when they were marching through the debris-ridden fields of Naggiar it had been quite a… curious experience. The Sergeant had actually just been complaining about the weight of the Ragnite Gas canister they'd retrieved if he remembered correctly, and it had sparked quite a petty verbal squabble over the radio.

Most regional operations teams were deployed for years within their designated zones without roster changes; perhaps his recent reassignment to their squad was shaking up the routine they'd worked themselves into was all? Either way, he found it hard picturing them working like this normally.

He blinked, as the sharp crackle of the Lieutenant's voice on the radio shook him from chasing after the scurrying thoughts in his head; it seemed as though this time, the Lieutenant had decided to skip the formalities.

"What does it seem like to you, you damned oaf? By the nonexistent deities of the superstitious nonsensical babble folklore wrought by the fool peasants of this forsaken backwater province, if you put half as much thought into the placement of this engine as you did with explosives we-"

Whatever hypothetical outcome the Lieutenant was about the suggest was drowned out by the booming growl of the truck engine as it flared to life, the dim spark of blue it had been giving off blossoming into a deep shade of indigo.

That seemed to satisfy the Lieutenant, enough so for him to drop his long-winded response where it fell. He made a beeline for the Captain, not even bothering to send an acknowledging gaze to either the Sergeant or the Corporal.

"Engine plug was loose," he reported calmly, and then gesturing towards the nearby tank wreckage. "They probably didn't realize until it stalled out on them in the middle of battle."

The Corporal turned his own attention to the rusting blue hull of the disabled tank, only now noticing the jagged crater punched through the base of its turret, the strips of metal peeled aside from the gaping hole frozen in what almost seemed like a writhing motion.

A single light tank against a full vanguard. Even had it been fully functional he couldn't imagine things would've turned out any different.

The Sergeant scoffed. "Our contact left us with a broke shit truck and their town watch rode into battle with a defunct tank. There anything in this town that actually worked to begin with?"

The Captain ignored his remark, pressing forth with the most important matter at hand.

"Is the truck serviceable now or not?"

"Yes, I do believe my modifications have restored adequate functionality to the vehicle."

There was a moment of stillness as they all waited for the Captain to respond, for him to give his orders. The Captain didn't do so for quite some time, not even seeming to check about his surroundings and just standing blankly in the middle of the road. With the stoic features of his mask never shifting, and his armored form standing still as a statue, it was impossible to tell what he was even thinking.

He did that every so often. It was actually somewhat unnerving, as though time simply stopped moving; the passage of it slowing to a crawl, with seconds stretching out into minutes in the absence of orders to drive their actions.

And then he broke the silence, churning out instructions at a clipped and curt pace while simultaneously shouldering his rifle and reaching down to scoop up the Ragnite gas canister.

"Lieutenant, you're on the wheel and radio. Corporal, passenger seat, I need you on watch; intel said the ride from here to Kloden should be smooth enough, but that's at least a week old report now and the Imps are moving ahead of the forecasted invasion schedule, so we might find some pockets of advance scouts; or Gallian stragglers. I'll switch off with you when we're past Barious. Until then, Sergeant, you're with me in the back."

A muted chorus of 'Yes Captain's sounded out, and they wasted no time in moving off to their designated positions. The blazing flare of light the tank-turned-truck engine was dimmed to a filtered glow through the front radiator as the Lieutenant slammed the hood closed. He unslung the hefty black hulk of radio equipment off of his back, setting it down in the narrow space between his seat and the Corporal's designated one before climbing up into the cabin himself.

The vehicle structure shuddered as the Captain and Sergeant clambored into the back, their armored forms disappearing under the olive green canopy draped over the cargo platform. The latter officer let a sigh slip out onto their squad comm channel as he did so. Metal scraped on metal as they presumably eased the Ragnite gas canister along the floor of the cargo compartment, into an agreeable position.

And then it was his turn, climbing up the shuddering steps into the flea-chewed cushions of his seat, before pulling the door on his side shut. He spared a glance over to his left, watching the Lieutenant fiddle with the dials on the radio set beside them; a few moments later, a burst of static flared across their radio channels. It persisted for a little while, a mess of musical tunes lost among the garble. They must have tuned in during one of GBS' rare moments when they had nothing to report.

The fact didn't slip by the Sergeant, who made sure to capitalize on the opportunity to insult Gallia again; the Corporal guessed the commando hadn't grown very fond of the little principality during his time spent there. "If the Imp invasion goes quick enough that they turn that damn broadcast station to ash before the music break ends, it wouldn't be a moment too soon." Neither the Lieutenant nor Captain argued with his sentiment.

Soon after, the truck lurched forth, engine rumbling as the static on the radio gradually cleared away.

While little voices and wailing instruments filled the Corporal's ears, the blurred lens of the windshield obscured his view. The reverberations of the metal cage of the cabin settled on a steady and jarring pace as the truck made its way out of the charred ruins of Bruhl.

 _Hänschen klein_ _,_ _Ging allein…_


	6. 6 Live Intel

_-smoke-_

 _-clouds-_

 _-strewn-_

 _-easing-_

 _-up,_ _ **dumping**_ _the entire goddamn column into the river! Anyone asks, you heard it from our very own frontline correspondent, and don't you forget-_

 _-_ _ **'hope'? I just received, alongside the, usual knocks on my door from clueless idiot 'investigators' who probably couldn't even figure out the ass end of a radio from their dick, this morning, a whole slew-**_

 __ _-of bodies. Well, tanks too I guess. Kid killed a buncha Imps. I don't see the big deal, tell you the truth, everyone's making it seem like_ _ **-**_

 __ _-the mastermind behind the success of the operation. Hailing from but a humble border town, the son of- get this-_

 _-_ _ **political and propagandist corruption to the highest degree! We're not winning jack shit people, we're just throwing-**_

 __ _-volunteers! These brave men and women, days fresh out of bootcamp-_

 _-one of em, couldn't even pitch her fucking tent correctly without knocking down everything around her. I ended up having to do it for her, figuring the least somebody could get was some sleep before going in-_

 _ **-the fucking meat grinder! Every 'victory' we get is no different than another torch and burn that those Imp pig fuckers pull on our land-**_

 _-for even victory comes with great cost, and in a special broadcast coming up in just five minutes, we'll be sure to cover some surprisingly thought-provoking views on that in some exclusive interviews with-_

 _ **-fucking children turned murderers is what they are. This is the new generation the aristocracy is breeding, people-**_

 __ _-don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to downplay the Militia for what they did here, nobody's denying that; hell, I bet I would've died at the bridgehead if they failed. I just think people are getting their hopes up over nothing-_

 _ **\- so FUCK the draft, FUCK war bonds, and FUCK YOU FOR LETTING IT HAPPEN!**_

 __ _-and that's all for now folks. Remember, be sure to tune in after the break for our new, exclusive interview sister series to "Life of a Soldier", "Life of a Militiaman"._

 _-you know what, I think I've spoken enough. If you're so caught up in the Militia hype, why don't you go talk to them before they get wiped out in their next suicide mission?_


	7. 7

There was a little boy standing in the middle of the street, a featureless mesh doll clutched in his frail twig of an arm. The mist shrouded his features, leaving only a skeletal silhouette standing out in the obscuring fog.

Other dolls of similar make laid strewn about the mist shrouded stone around him, little blue and grey domes with neat holes drilled through them haphazardly grafted into their criss-crossed scalps.

There wasn't much in the way of facial features on each; a pair of unblinking discs for eyes, a rictus grin stitched in where their mouth would be with calloused twine.

It was… disturbing. His chest tightened somewhat under the armor.

The Corporal looked up.

A great shadow fell over him and blotted out his view as the boy's free hand reached down and plucked him from the yard of dolls.

 **0-0-0**

A flare of light broke through the unblinking red lens of his eyes. In that brief moment it almost felt as though they'd detached from him, the squishy orbs that synapsed them to his consciousness flickering around his surroundings with a wild and unhinged abandon.

He blinked.

A jarring rattle vibrated across the metal frame of the truck cabin, travelling through the seat beneath him up to his armored skin. A tingle raced along his bones.

He shook his head ever so slightly, and found that his vision had corrected itself now. The world around him seemed to phase back into focus, the Lieutenant sitting to his left manning the wheel, the sun-baked plains rolling past them outside the smudged windows.

He exhaled a breath he hadn't known he was holding in. The thin rasp that did manage to snake out of his barred teeth was lost among crackling radio feedback and the incessant shuddering of the truck ploughing over the earth.

The Corporal's fingers tightened just very slightly- testing the structure they laid on, mild downward pressures to ensure they were still anchored to his rifle.

Dozed off. The lack of sleep must have caught up to him? It'd only been a few days though. He'd tracked targets for two times that length before.

 _"-but, for the valiant men and women who won us the day here in Vasel, there is no time to rest-"_

They were _still_ reporting on that victory it seemed. The conditions outside hadn't changed much either, a lot of drying grass and dust as they skirted along the border of… some desert. He guessed it hadn't been too long since he'd drifted off.

Still, while on watch- that was unacceptable. Unexpected as well, but there wasn't much that could be done about it now.

Some desert. Where were they again?

 _Barious,_ some mental telegraph reminded him.

 _Switch off of watch duty with the Captain after passing it. Terrain and climate should be noticeably more temperate. Final destination in Kloden._

So it was then. He diverted his gaze back to the flat plains scrolling by outside, withering stalks of grass flittering by with an occasional bump in the terrain- all the way to the distant bright blue horizon.

Still not a single sign of life in sight. The Sergeant had said they'd be essentially 'home free' at this point, and the Corporal was starting to see why. He wondered, just a little bit, how often the squad would've gone through this exact routine, this exact route- just… waiting. With no target, no imminent threat in sight and no real knowledge of who or what laid out in the sprawling landscape that _could_ pose a threat to them.

The radio broadcasts they received were about the only things that reminded him that, somewhere past those blue skies, there were plenty of 'threats' lying in wait.

 _"-anything at all to say?"_

 _"…"_

 _"Oh, the strong and silent type I see. Haven't really gotten to know your team too well, have you?"_

A pause on the radio. He listened, as he usually did during the interview segments; using the voices to blot out the churning truck engine, while keeping his visual attention focused on the outside.

 _"No."_

 _"I thought snipers usually worked in pairs?"_

 _"Sometimes."_

 _"Not you?"_

 _"No."_

 _"Not… very talkative are you?"_

 _"No."_

 _"Ah… well um, you wouldn't mind if I asked a few questions would you?"_

 _"…"_

 _"…"_

…

 _"Ask them. Then leave me be."_

 _"Right… well, um- I think it'd be, fair to say, that there's not a whole lot of your type around- uh, snipers, that is. I mean, I think, you're the first one we've had on here at least; what's it like to… be one of those few?"_

…

He blinked.

Another quake running through the truck set his gaze straight again.

 _"…"_

 _"…"_

 _"…seeing through the scope is… uncomfortable. But necessary."_

 _"How so?"_

 _"It's disorienting. The lenses warp things. Twists them."_

 _"So how is it necessary?"_

 _"It makes things clearer."_

 _"But you just said it's disorienting."_

 _"It is."_

 _"So…"_

 _"…"_

 _"…"_

 _"…?"_

 _"It lets you see farther. But the longer you peer into the scope, the more you begin to lose yourself in the distance."_

…

…

 _"Have you… 'lost yourself' then?"_

…

…

 _"No."_

 **0-0-0**

 _"Corporal."_

"Yes Captain?"

It felt strange to speak after such extended silence. It shook him from the numbed routine of scanning over the dry plains outside.

 _"Where are we?"_

He looked a little further towards to horizon, the pink-tinted stretch of sky where the sun precariously balanced itself on; just more flatness, more withering grass, more bleached earth.

"Still within the confines of-"

 _Barious_

"Barious. Sir."

A pause. He turned his attention away from the windows now, the instinctual concentration on his distant surroundings broken as he inexplicably began to ever so slightly tense up in anticipation of new orders; it was a subtle thing, but he'd learned to remember the feeling of the tightening fibres around his fingers, when he gripped his rifle more tightly. More often than not, it was because he would soon be given the order to fire.

But there were no targets in sight. He glanced to his left, briefly meeting the red-eyed gaze of the Lieutenant who, perhaps similarly as him, was awaiting potential further instruction from their Captain.

So why did the Captain require a status report?

 _Switch off on watch duty after Barious._

That was why. But they weren't past Barious yet. So he shouldn't be receiving any new orders.

Unexpectedly, the Lieutenant cut in, his filtered voice crackling over the squad radio channel as well as physically reverberating within the confines of the truck cabin over the din of churning machinery.

"We should be close enough to the end of these arid plains by now, it won't be much longer before we can find somewhere more forested to stop and switch position."

 _"You sure you wanna take this tin can offroading in Kloden's pisshole?"_

"If you prefer to walk, Sergeant, you're welcome to cut your own way through the forest."

Neither of the two officers decided to carry on with a cycle of rebukes and rebuttals as the Corporal had been expecting. Maybe they were simply too tired to bother now.

 _"Very well,"_ said the Captain. _"Carry on."_

They carried on.


	8. 8

**Um… more filler, unfortunately. Pretty short and inconsequential as well, aside from some more thoughts and observations that probably could've been welded in elsewhere. It feels really weird narrating from this perspective; it's hard sometimes to discern how much distortion and 'wrongness' ought to be apparent and how much ought to be numbingly folded in with everything else.**

 **Things are quite literally about to explode pretty soon and it just felt really jarring in terms of pacing to me when I initially attempted to leap right into that. I guess I feel like the stage hasn't even been set that firmly either, with just a lot of fragments lost in a warped and distorted… environment, I guess. I was writing a lot more expository dialogue for these last two bits, but it didn't feel right at all.**

 **0-0-0**

The change in the environment was quite palpable, even if he didn't quite bother to register it until they'd already rolled to a stop in the shade of a small grove of trees. Maybe it had something to do with how the passing of the night had tinted his vision a muted shade of red now.

His boots landed in healthy stalks of grass, for one. There was a distinct difference between the softly shuffling wake they left behind as they were trampled into the fertile earth and the brittle crackle of desert-drained shrubbery he'd been half expecting.

It did rather throw him off when he took a better look around him and realized that an entire forest laid just beyond their current stop, the thick mass of trunks and leaves highlighted with a slightly lighter shade of red off in the distance, beyond the last stretch of flat earth separating it from the smattering of trees they'd stopped under.

How had he managed to miss that?

 _"-we're 'winning' the war now, is it? I'm sorry, I'm finding the supposed 'news' from the front a little foggy in my memory when I can hardly earn half a goddamn meal every day anymore! Yes, contrary to what you may believe revealing the dirty truth that the pigfuck aristocracy doesn't want you to hear_ _ **is not**_ _my full-time occupation-"_

 _"Lieutenant, switch that off. Get ready to broadcast the rendezvous signal."_

 _"We're still at least a day away-"_

 _"And the recovery team would be expecting us to be there by now already. Prep the signal and wait for their response hail, they're gonna need to know we'll be late."_

Were they truly that far behind? He flexed his fingers around the frame of his rifle a little, mulling over what could've delayed them so as he began his march around to the back of the truck. Perhaps thinking over why he hadn't been keeping track of time himself as well.

He took another glance around him, that feeling of… disconnect, from his eyes threatening to return again, the shades of red starting to ever so mildly blur together.

He blinked.

It cleared aside quickly enough once he saw the Captain round about the back, the officer's shrouded figure oddly more easily sharpening into focus than the thinly wooded grove around him. He even managed to discern a brief, acknowledging nod directed towards him as they briskly passed each other.

Then he climbed into the back of the truck. Took a seat deep within the dim red shadows, the gas canister strapped to the floor barely registering to his view, the slumped- presumably sleeping- form of the Sergeant leaning against the wall on the far side-

The truck shook, a churning roar that rose up from the steady shaking it had settled into in its stillness, and began lumbering forth again.

The Corporal didn't see much of anything else for a good while then.


	9. 9

**This was going to be something much, much more longer, and not to mention intricate- I eventually found myself kind of drifting off and getting totally lost in trying to throw twist after twist into this stupid ass skirmish that was supposed to be just quick and messy to move things along.**

 **0-0-0**

Something shifted in the dim cargo hold. His gaze skimmed first over to the gas canister laid out across the floor, of course checking that their primary objective of all things hadn't been compromised; though partly as expected, the thick straps that bound it down were taut and unyielding as ever, however much the container underneath it buckled with the vibrations of the truck.

It was strange to think that such an unassuming canister was supposedly such an incredibly dangerous weapon. The metal shell had no markings on it, and the streaks of rust that ran along its length belied the age of the container.

He knew what was in it, of course- it was one of the few explicit details they were all privy to, if only to ensure that they would then handle it properly. A very potent… 'chemical gas', they had called it. How potent it could've been, or what it even did, of course, they hadn't personally seen the results of. By the time the stockpile they'd taken it from had been detonated and subsequently released over Ghirlandaio, they'd been long gone from the site of battle already; only a few second-hand radio news reports suggested it had any part in the fall of the fortress, and none explained exactly why.

He just failed to see how it could accomplish anything bullets or explosives couldn't.

He turned his attention away from such pointless musings, for it was not his place to know the why of things in any case. His eyes, almost without further conscious input, trailed along their own path to accomplish their original purpose of finding what had ever so slightly shifted in the truck compartment. It didn't take long to find it, considering there was only one other entity of note within those dark confines.

The Sergeant was awake now; the segmented plates around his left hand's fingers cradling the barrel of his machine gun, his right, grasping it by its handle as it rested on his lap. He himself still leaned against the side of the truck compartment, his red gaze idly shifting about.

" _Try it again."_

 _"Yes Captain."_

A familiar pattern of pitched _beeps_ drummed out across the squad channel, a string of chittering utterly unintelligible to… all but a select few. The Corporal wasn't one of them.

Suffice to say, he'd never encountered such a strange manner of communication before- perhaps because there'd never been much _need_ for it. Orders were simpler, extraction contingencies far less complex, not to mention the fact that there would always be a handler, an invisible voice in his head, in direct contact with him. Sometimes his bullet had found its mark within hours of deployment and he simply had to retrace his steps to the original dropoff for evac.

This was… new. Somewhat discomforting, if he was honest with himself. He noticed his fingers were tense again in the silence that reigned over the mechanical rattling of the vehicle as it chugged along.

 _"Play it again."_

The Captain's voice betrayed no signs of anxiousness, or concern, or anger- anything that might indicate this lack of response from their 'recovery team' was out of the ordinary.

Did it really matter in the end though?

"Don't worry about it, this always happens at some point."

The Sergeant's sudden interjection, especially how it addressed his exact thoughts at the moment, shook him somewhat. Though physically he didn't notice any shift within the taut fibres beneath his armor, he found he had to take a moment and reacclimatise his sight. The Sergeant's gaze was now fixed upon him; the Corporal realized, the officer had likely been observing him the whole time. Possibly picked up on his line of musing that way as well- somehow.

The Sergeant took his apparent silence as a gesture to continue, his filtered and gravelly voice still carrying the same disinterested- tiredness- that it had always seemed to. Regardless, of course, of the fact that he'd been resting for several hours by now.

"All it takes is for Command to rewrite a couple pilot orders for the day, and suddenly our evac team's retasked to some other 'priority objective'."

The Corporal mulled over that information- as quickly as he could, of course, such that he'd be ready to analyze anything else the Sergeant said to him if he chose to follow up.

It made sense, he supposed. With how large the operation area was, things were bound to change in the time it took for them to transit from one objective to another. He guessed he just wasn't used to it.

"How long have we been stumbling around here?"

He paused, starting to find it difficult to focus again to answer the Sergeant's query. There had been… a lot of shaking. The truck, that was. The cargo hold was dark, and the canvas stretched around to the back exit with only a small slit in it to allow for entrance and exit so he'd not noticed any shift in the light outside.

 _The signals. How long have they been trying the signals for?_

It started as one every hour- they'd shot off… four of them. Then half hour intervals. They did that for maybe two hours only (another four signals). Now there didn't seem to be too much of a pattern to it; he estimated they couldn't have been keeping at it for much more than an hour.

"Seven hours."

The Sergeant nodded, a sigh grating out of his mask filters. "Better ready up then, we're probably gonna have to find our own way out if that's the case."

He was tempted to ask _how,_ for a passing moment. How were they supposed to know, for _certain_ , when their extraction was retasked? How did they know _where_ to go next? How did they operate like this without explicit instruction?

He blinked.

This hadn't been the first time he'd asked that.

' _The squad_ is _your chain of command now. Follow their orders as you would any other. The Captain, then the Lieutenant, then the Sergeant.'_

The former two hadn't given him any instruction. The latter had said…

'ready up'

And so the Corporal readied up.

 **0-0-0**

A thunderous crack shattered the monotonous droning of the truck engine; the quake that followed in its roiling wake sending a violent shudder along the walls and ground. It promptly threw the Corporal onto his side before he could register anything else, a violent lurching of the cage around him threatening to cast him out, to tear away his skin, his face, his eyes

He blinked, as it all came to a screeching, grinding, crashing halt.

"What the hell was that!?" Barked the Sergeant.

 _"Sergeant, status on the canister."_

"Canister's just fucking great-"

 _"Cut it loose and prep it for manual transport. Corporal, status?"_

 _Rifle structure uncompromised_

 _Negative damage to armor_

A grunt unwillingly escaped his mask, his chest tightening as his vision blurred into a swimming and unfocused mess- his eyes, where were his eyes

"Fucking goddamn it-"

The string of curses that the Sergeant gutturally spat out over the snapping of severed leather had him grasping for semblance of a target to focus on. He found a splotch of darker red in the center of his vision, moving with a violent yet precise… focus

He blinked, and saw the Sergeant swiftly tearing away the bindings that strapped the gas canister down with a knife. The officer paid him no heed even as he stared, the rest of his surroundings sharpening back into focus in due time.

 _What's happening to me_

"Status is green, Captain," he breathed.

 _"Get outside and stay low, Imperial presence confirmed-"_

There was a burst of static, and then he heard an unfamiliar voice snake into his ears. It was… different. Even with the garbling filter of the radio over it, there was a certain lack of distortion to it. And it wasn't being addressed at any of them.

 _"R-Royal lead, this is Royal 7, c-confirm visual contact on… unidentified vehicle…"_

The Sergeant had paused at the moment he'd heard 'Imperial presence' earlier, but now his head had fully perked up. He exchanged a glance with the Corporal, who'd still not moved from his position. The Captain's voice barked over the radio, his usual monotone finally giving way to a bellowing urgency.

 _"Corporal, move! Find those scouts and kill them!"_

Kill them.

He moved. A streak of almost blindingly pink light was peeking through the slit in the canvas- it must have been daytime by now. He flipped a switch on his mask even as he zipped across to the back of the truck compartment, and the red tinge to everything faded away.

He leapt out of the opening and immediately dove into the tall stalks of grass beneath him, the split second he spent airborne giving him barely a glancing glimpse at the thick clusters of trees around him.

 _"W-what was that?"_

 _"Royal lead, this is Royal 6, we have movement coming from the truck-"_

 _"Can you identify as allied or hostile?"_

 _"Negative… son of a bitch, I can't see shit here"_

The Corporal tensed, remaining as still as he could within his shoddy position of concealment and straining his ears for any clue as to where these two targets were- footsteps amongst the rustling grass, the shuffle of armor plating even, considering how the Captain had identified them as indeed Imperial. Judging from the radio chatter however, it seemed that they were still holding position… wherever they were.

 _"Royal 6, can you report on the condition of the truck?"_

 _"Front tires are totally blown out, there's some structural damage to the cab but nothing severe. Mostly intact-"_

 _"They must've driven into an antipersonnel mine. Our drivers would damn well know better than that; it's not one of ours. Keep eyes on the truck, shoot anything else you see moving around it, we're on our way."_

 _"We could just waste it with a couple grenades now."_

 _"Negative. Standing orders are to try and take any enemy spies or infiltrators alive for interrogation; an unmarked transport vehicle turning up most certainly constitutes a suspicious enough maneuver for further investigation."_

There it was- a sigh, unmarred by the radio static, followed by a soft murmur which most likely was comprised of a colorful choice of words not intended to be heard by one's superior officer- it was somewhere…

 _There._

Two dull grey little domes poking out amongst the grass and trees, just to his left; judging from the proximity of their voices, not terribly far from them either. He remembered what they'd just said- 'waste them with a couple grenades'. Within throwing distance, even.

 _"Copy that, will hold position. Try not to get lost. Asshole."_

 _"Say again Royal 6?"_

At that range it probably wasn't necessary to adjust for wind… he glanced up at the thick canopies of bramble and leaves overhead, the web of foliage remaining utterly still. Not that there was much wind to contend with regardless.

 _"Shit, how do you turn this thing- uh, nothing, nothing, just the wind. Will see you soon. Sir. Over."_

And then, there was silence. He cast a fleeting glance at the canopy again to make sure- no wind. Contrary to what 'Royal 6' had reported. Royal 6- and 7. It was impossible to tell which helmet was which. Not that it mattered much, both targets were of relatively equal priority.

The Corporal drew in a quiet breath through the filtered grating of his mouth, and, bracing his armored knees against the mud beneath his coat, gently eased the scope of his rifle up to his eye.

He blinked, as the lens warped the sturdy trees and rigid stalks of grass along his periphery into a distorted parody of their true form. His eye found itself again, a dull red lens smoothly transitioning into focus with where the scope pointed it.

The thin black strands of the crosshairs hovered over one of the Imperial helmets.

 _"Captain, canister's secured."_

 _"Good. Hold position, do not move until those scouts are neutralized."_

 _"Fuck… Imps. I thought this goddamn forest was clear?"_

He eased the arm of his rifle downwards, ever so slightly, nudging the narrow space in the distance between his crosshairs down with it until the top of the helm just crested over the horizontal bars. He pivoted between the stretch of emptiness that separated that helmet and the other beside it- they were close, if he bothered to visualize the whole of his two targets they would've been in arms' reach of each other.

He repeated the motion, tensing his arms and relaxing to the rhythm of the nonexistent recoil after each unfired shot he released onto the targets. The quicker he could eliminate the second, the better. Cleaner.

 _"Corporal, we're waiting on your shot."_

One last time. The crosshairs settled on the… left helmet.

 _Raspy laughter, tobacco laden grittiness in the rain. 'Little grey dome, like a pawn's rounded head- real fitting', the man had said._ That was it- what had given him pause before, in Bruhl.

It didn't now.

He squeezed the trigger, and a cloud of red mist popped out from the pawn head. He followed through with the swiveling motion he'd spent the last several seconds practicing, his finger jamming down on the trigger even before his arms steadied themselves. The results were not as clean. A thick ribbon of blood shot out from the distant grasses and splattered against the bark of a nearby tree, the pawn head ever so mildly spasming before submerging into the grass.

"Targets eliminated."

" _Move it!"_

" _Damn it Captain, which way?"_

" _Any way away from the truck and the scouts! Lieutenant grab the radio, and stay right behind me, I'll take point, Sergeant, follow the Lieutenant, Corporal, take up the rear-"_

" _Royal 6, Royal 7, we heard gunfire from your heading, what is your status?"_

The Corporal tore himself away from the scope, shooting up straight as the rest of his squad loudly clambored out of the derelict truck- he instinctively searched the ground zero of where his shots had landed first, an old habit to make absolutely sure his marks were dead before moving on- but the bodies had been long buried within the thick grass.

"Corporal, let's go!"

He whipped around, obeying wordlessly as soon as he saw them dashing off in the direct opposite direction of the dead scouts- swiftly gliding through the grass, leaving only swaying stalks in their wake.

He caught up easily, following the clanking canister that hung loosely from the Sergeant's back as they zipped past low hanging branches, a swirling maze of leaves whipping by them. His ears buzzed with a static-garbled cacophony of intercepted radio transmissions.

" _Ah, son of a bitch they're dead!"_

" _No, wait, he's still alive-"_

 _"He's bleeding like a stuck pig from the fucking neck, he's gone!"_

 _"Where are those bastards!?"_

" _Royal 12 move to support-"_

" _Hans, get back here-"_

" _I- I see them! I see them!"_

A bullet whipped past them, missing wildly by meters.

" _I-it's the Gallians! They're running, to-towards, towards- 12'o clock, right in front of us!"_

 _"Royal, hold fire, we need to take them ali-"_

Such orders fell on deaf ears- immediately drowned out by a hailstorm of gunfire, rattling machine pistols and popping rifles sounding off wildly. Bullets careened aimlessly towards them, zipping by -sometimes- dangerously close.

" _Royal-"_

 _"Stuff a fucking sock in it LT, you're not getting half of us killed just so you can get your damn promotion-Royal 3,8,9, get in close you're not hitting shit from this range, shoot to kill!"_

 _"Royal 2, you will respect my authority and take these transgressors in alive-"_

 _"Klaus, faster! You run like my mother! Elisa, try to get in front of them!"_

A harsh chattering eclipsed the more distant gunfire, and this time, the bullets found their mark- the Lieutenant stumbled as a brace of shots glanced off his left pauldron, one stray bullet smacking into the casing around the radio on his back.

 _"Damn it, he's still up!"_

 _"Royal 8 and 9, you will fire with non lethal intent or so help me-"_

 _"I don't think that's gonna be a problem- what the hell is that armor?"_

The Lieutenant recovered quickly, finding his balance and surging forth back to his original distance from the Captain's fleeing form, but as more bullets whipped by their heads he was quick to bark out his own orders.

 _"Sergeant, get those gunners off of us!"_

The Corporal abruptly sidestepped as the Sergeant whirled around midstep with nary another word, machine gun already leveled at his hip- The Corporal had hardly made it a single stride past the officer before the deafening, shearing shriek of the weapon filled his ears. It lasted for but scant seconds, but the burst of comm chatter that followed left no doubt of the carnage it had sown. The Sergeant rejoined their formation at his assigned spot as smoothly as the Lieutenant had recovered before him.

 _"8 and 9 are down!"_

 _"Oh by the... look at their bodies..."_

 _"Get in closer and try to slow them down, we'll come in from the side!"_

 _"Gods damn it, forget it, pull back! Fucking look at this, they just ripped through them like, like-"_

 _"Royal 4 you will observe proper communication protocol on this channel! Royal 3 you have permission to pursue, do not hesitate to use deadly force!"_

The surviving gunner obeyed hastily, as mere moments later they found a renewed hail of bullets spattering against the dirt beneath their boots- the Sergeant bellowed into the radio as they found momentary reprieve, zipping under a fallen trunk propped up between two mounds in the uneven landscape.

"Captain we're not gonna be able to outrun them with all this damn gear weighing us down!"

 _"I know!"_

"Then why the hell are we still running!?"

Rifle bullets joined the torrent of pistol rounds now, one slamming into the Captain's shoulder as though to punctuate the Sergeant's point. The Captain let a single curse slip his breath as he whirled around in the same moment, leveling his own rifle at the treeline to their left and letting off a thundering burst of fire. The storm of pistol rounds falling upon them abruptly ceased in response.

 _"3 is down!"_

 _"Fuck, no! Hans! Those bastards'll pay for this!"_

The fire was focusing to a point that they had to begin ducking to the side, behind the trees to avoid taking too many hits now- the Sergeant had pulled ahead to the front of the group, as the canister on his back presented a large target, in addition to hindering his ability to fire and maneuver. The Corporal merely milled about in the middle of the pack as the Captain and Lieutenant slipped into the rear, assault rifles chattering off in short bursts that never did manage to find their mark.

He found his legs propelling him forward faster with each stride now- the ground beneath his boots was beginning to slope downwards.

 _"Keep pressing forward, we can corner them at the bottom of that depression! They can't run forever!"_

 _"Like hell we can't..."_ muttered the Captain in the momentary lull of fire. He held up a fist and motioned for them to take cover, the three of them obeying wordlessly as they each slipped behind a separate tree, the Captain crouching behind a rocky outcrop as he surveyed the field of battle they'd wedged themselves into.

The Corporal took those few seconds to take a gander at his own analysis- they were already relatively deep into the depression the enemy officer had pointed out now, being more than halfway down the forested slope they were being pursued down. The depression itself was certainly not particularly steep, but it was significant enough to give any force fighting from the higher ground better concealment from fire coming towards them from the bottom for sure. The other side was... quite a different story.

Rather than being faced with the gentle slope of a slanting hilltop as he would've expected, the Corporal found himself staring down a craggy wall of jagged rock abruptly rising from the earth.

"Typical fucking Kloden," growled the Sergeant.

 **0-0-0**

 _"Elisa, stay with me..."_

 _"Royal 12, where are you? We need support now!"_

 _"Hans? Oh no, please no, not Hans- m-medic! Medic!"_

 _"...what am I supposed to tell Mother?"_

 _"Royal 12! Report!"_

 _"Elisa gods damn it, what am I going to tell Mother!?"_

 _"Medic!"_

 _"Son of a bitch, Klaus..."_

 _"Hans, please don't cry, don't cr- oh-"_

 _"Don't look, come on, we need to go-"_

 _"-go! Go! Forward!"_

 _"-to hell, you bastards!"_

 _"GO!"_


	10. 10

A splash of bright blue flared into his eyes. There was a crack, the heated splitting of bark, and he found himself shaken away from the churning mess of voices barking and wailing over the radio.

"Ah, hell. I guess they had to smarten up eventually."

"Sergeant, 12'o-"

"Yeah, yeah," came the grumbling response- as though it were routine. The piercing screech of the Sergeant's machine gun followed in abrupt and shattering fashion, eclipsing seemingly all other noise filtering through the trees with… an almost otherworldly pitch.

Dirty, fleshy hands working calloused handles of strange machines, slicing- no- _shearing-_ sheets of raggedy cloth into uniform squares. Neatly torn cloth.

It lasted for seconds at most, that peculiar image of dusty burlap and stitched buttons being swallowed up in the abrupt silence left behind as the Sergeant ceased fire.

And then the screams came.

" _Nooooooooooo-!"_ Off they went again, despairing cries, vows of vengeance, panicky curses flooding the comm channel like a broken record.

The repetitive nature of it was perhaps what made it easier to filter out, just… noise, like the buzzing static that ran alongside it all. The Captain and Sergeant chattered calmly over it, the Captain's tone about as casual as the Corporal had ever heard.

"How many?"

"Only three. I doubt they're gonna try that again."

"Damn it. We need to speed this up."

As though to emphasize the Captain's remark, another grenade went off in the mire of trees- this one close enough to illuminate the trunks of those that they sheltered behind.

"Pull back another five paces, cover behind those rocks- on my mark-"

There went another. A sprinkle of blasted dirt fell upon the Lieutenant.

"Go!"

The Corporal felt it almost as soon as he'd stepped out from his cover- the jarring _thud_ of a bullet slamming against his left shoulder. He stumbled as the slug ricocheted off the armored skin, boots slipping against the root-tangled slope as he felt his form start to lurch off balance.

" _I- I got one! I think I got one!"_

" _Great shot kid- come on, we've almost got 'em!"_

" _Royal 4 and 5, hold your position-"_

His squad disappeared from view, slipping into cover behind the rocky outcrop the Captain had designated- the Corporal caught himself on the trunk of a nearby tree, then wordlessly followed in their wake as more tracers zipped by him.

He settled in a spot that had been conveniently left for him, between the Sergeant and Lieutenant and to the left of the outcrop; the cover, sturdier than trees it may have been, was barely wide enough to conceal all four of them. There was perhaps a second of respite that he was granted, a moment without the crackle of static or gunpowder.

The vibration of the bullet impacting his shoulder still seemed to race along the tensed fibres under the plating. It'd been a long time since he'd been shot; first time with lethal intent. Funny. It didn't feel that much different from rubber bullets.

"Two more coming ahead of the others," droned the Lieutenant.

The Sergeant didn't bother with acknowledging the target designation this time- a few impotent and wildly aimed shots flew past his armored form as he slipped out with his weapon levelled at his waist, the burst of fire he sent back at their pursuers as abrupt as ever.

He pivoted back into cover, the trailing screams following behind him in the place of more bullets the only confirmation the squad needed that two more of their pursuers had fallen.

" _2, 14, 15, with me-we need to get around them- that platform over there-"_

The relative stillness of the battleground now made it easy for him to locate what they were referring to. 'Platform' really might've been the best way to describe it, a cluster of uneven, but- relatively flat- rocks embedded in the dirt, elevated further up the slope and angled in to their side.

" _To hell with that! There's four of us left goddamn it!"_

" _Royal 12 is on the way with reinforcements! We just need to hold them down- keep the pressure up, we almost have them cornered!"_

"Lieutenant, what are those reinforcements?"

"I'm- _working_ on it-" grunted the officer in response; the Corporal spared a glance over at his hunched form, making note of the wires tangled up in his fingers as he dug through the innards of his radio. A small trail of smoke was wisping out from the casing- of course. It had been shot earlier. 8 and 9.

" _F-fuck that! You saw what happened to 4 and 5! We're f-f-fucking dead the moment we step out of cover!"_

" _That's why you keep your head down damn it!"_

" _What good does that do if there's no_ _ **goddamn cover between us and those rocks!?**_ _"_

" _2, you- what? What is it? What the hell do you mean Militia-"_

There was a surge of static- punctuated by a low grunt coming from the Lieutenant- and then a flood of new voices, more _noise_ to try and filter out.

" _-exactly what I said I mean dammit! Son of a bitch, my radiator's shitting out bullets- 3'o clock, Lancers goddamn it!"_

" _Royal 12, what is your location!?"_

" _At the truck! – Aquila, get them off of my ass!"_

" _Continue directly forwards, through the trees, we need immediate support!"_

"They're not firing," mused the Sergeant. "Move in and finish them off?"

Precious seconds of mutual silence ticked by- no gunfire, no speech. The Corporal glanced over at the Captain, the officer's back pressed ramrod straight against the rock. More noise over the radio soon broke that silence.

" _What do you mean,_ _ **you**_ _need support? They're tearing us apart, get over here!"_

" _Royal 12-"_

" _Motherfucker, there are four of us left! We make a single move, and they rip us to shreds in seconds!_ _ **So yes! We do need some fucking support!"**_

Somebody was outright crying. The Captain still said nothing.

The Corporal's fingers tensed- the throbbing in his shoulder numbing away, like noise.

" _Royal 2! Your insubordination has reached utterly intolerable levels! Were we not in combat-"_

" _Fuck, fuck fuck! I didn't mean to do it, please, I swear-"_

" _There is no glory in this!"_

" _Get me out of here!"_

" _Mother-"_

" _Father-"_

" _Royal lead, hang tight! We're on our way!"_

"Captain!" Barked the Lieutenant, his rising voice betraying just the slightest hint of- something; the same thing that practically permeated the radio channel. "What are your orders!?"

The Captain's gaze snapped over to the Corporal.

"Corporal, I want you up around that platform they want to take- not directly on it, find some sort of concealment, either way you need a better angle on them. We'll draw their attention with fire."

"That's a lot of killing for just one shooter," said the Sergeant.

"Even without the canister you couldn't get up there in time. And we're not getting out of here till they're all dead."

"It's a little late to still be playing cleanup in the middle of a battlefield," shot back the Sergeant, a certain edge beginning to work its way into his tone.

"Then we'd better finish this up while there's still only four witnesses, shouldn't we? Check your barrels- Corporal, don't make a move until the Sergeant opens fire."

"Yes sir." He was the only one who bothered to verbally confirm the Captain's orders this time.

" _Gods… oh Gods, forgive us…"_

" _Fuck this! I surrender, goddamn it, I surrender!"_

" _Aquila 4! If you so much as drop your weapon I swear I'll shoot you mys-"_

" _Aaaagh!"_

" _Gallian bastards!"_

" _I can't see… I can't see!"_

 **0-0-0**

The light bent around the scope, eyes locking into place.

The roaring noise filtering through the radio dissipated into distorted nothingness, along with the trees at his periphery.

 **0-0-0**

He could practically _feel_ the seething breaths slipping out the top of Friedrich's faceplate and settling upon the nape of his neck- the two of them hunched over behind the same tree, neither daring to move from their precarious perch as though the slightest twitch of muscle would see them both torn apart in a hail of bullets rushing out from the unknown recesses of this hellhole forest.

Normally, having the heavyset sergeant _that_ close would've made him far more than just mildly uncomfortable. The first time he'd laid eyes upon the burly man, not even in uniform and lounging his muscled arms over some heavy crate of miscellaneous equipment, an undisguised sneer creased over his bearded face-

As much as he hated to admit it, the man _terrified_ him. Looked more like a… criminal, convict, conscript, _any_ manner of unsightly character that belonged in a mine, or something some other, rather than the glorious Imperial Military. The thoughts had permeated his fears from day one of his assignment to Royal, images of the towering sergeant bodily tearing him apart in a rage, a childish fit – or tantrum of insubordination, or whatever such… borderline animals engaged in.

A feral _snarl_ growled out of Friedrich, as a fusillade of bullets ripping, _tearing_ , _shearing, burlap frayed threads-_ whipping around the trees surrounding them. He shuddered.

Erich wailed out in despair just metres behind them, curled up in a ball behind a thick rooted trunk- Michaela knelt quietly by his side.

The _tearing_ sound of bullets did not subside after mere seconds this time, as it always had before. Chills ran down the skin under the maroon plate of his armor as they peeled strips of bark off of their cover, his mind working in overdrive now with terror, seeing those bullets ripping and tearing and pulverizing and shredding and perforating

He squeezed his eyes shut. Friedrich had yet to move, and his heated breaths still warmed the exposed patch of skin on his neck. It felt like a damned wolf was at his back, eager to tear into him.

No, it wasn't Friedrich he saw tearing his corpse apart anymore. It seemed as though the Gallian beasts that prowled these lands were more monstrous than any animal the dregs of the Empire could shit out.

" _Royal lead, I suggest you get ready, we're coming in goddamn hot-"_

He winced at the sound of crackling gunfire and detonations that filtered in through Markus' transmission- the distant screams of Aquila squad as they were… _ripped, torn, pulverized- um…_ _ **shredded-**_ by the bullets and shrapnel that swarmed around Royal 12's armored hull. He was glad he'd paid especially close attention at the academy to operating the radio; he'd long cut out Aquila's comm channel.

Not that it helped much. The dying shrieks of his own squad still echoed freshly in his ears.

" _Royal lead?"_

"C-copy," he breathed.

And then his head split apart.

 **0-0-0**

He watched as Lieutenant Walther's helmeted head was suddenly obscured by a cloud of viscera- the domed helm breaking into fragments and joining the blossom of blood and gore that billowed out from the jagged hole punched through the back of his head.

The next pitch of the everlasting cry that was rippling out from his throat died abruptly on his tongue as he watched his squad leader hit the ground with a clanking _smack._

"Friedrich! Get down!" Michaela shrieked from beside him, her warning not even directed to him. It was like he'd just ceased to exist the moment he'd lost it.

Even so, her usual stony composure was broken like the perforated bodies that laid behind them. The mere thought of… that- again- managed to stir his vocal chords from lasting paralysation in the wake of Walther's death.

The bullet that punctured his lung soon after didn't give him much of a chance to cry out.

He fell back into the soiled earth, helmet smacking against the dirt as sunlight breaking through the canopy flooded his glazing eyes. He was dying then…

 _Elisa… mother… I'm so sorry…_

He tried to recall his sister's face, to… see her, one last time, in the flesh, before he joined her in death.

The only image he managed to will to mind was that of a helmet-

 _-little and grey, domed like a pawn's head._

 **0-0-0**

She blinked.

The splitting _crack_ that she heard had not, after all, been the sound of her skull breaking open- the bullet missed her by inches, slamming into the bark next to her.

Royal 12's voice filled her ears- panicky, bellowing, _noise._

The next bullet that came for her wasn't so far off its mark.

 **0-0-0**

One last shot, and the last of the four targets was slammed into the ground, a small red mist blossoming from their chestplate.

" _Corporal-"_

"All targets neutralized, Captain."

" _Not anymore! Find cover, those goddamn reinforcements just arrived!"_

Only then did his ears register the cacophony screeching off in the woods- he blinked, tearing his gaze away from the scope as it all rushed back in a torrential crashing of thundering explosions and splitting gunfire. And it was _close._

" _Corporal! Find somewhere to lay low, they're not going to last long with the Gallians hitting their flank but they're blanketing the place with grenades and shellfire!"_

"Yes Captain," he grunted, picking himself out of the cluster of prickly foliage he'd immersed himself into with as much steadiness as he could muster with the earth quaking around his boots.

" _Lancers,_ _ **Lancers-!"**_

There was a surge, a rush of searing _whooshes_ out in the trees- he could see it now, blazing azure streaks of the archaic lance warheads- impacting unseen targets in blossoming spheres of blue fire.

One careened wildly out from the trees and exploded in a flare of blinding light further to his left- close enough to light up the rocks forming the platform he was next to.

It didn't take him much longer to figure that those rocks wouldn't be adequate cover. So he ran, to where exactly, it was hard to tell. Away from the explosions of course, but that just led him farther and deeper into the woods, with nothing but fragile trees that would be blasted to pieces as cover.

" _Oh_ _ **Gods- TANK! TANK, RIGHT ON OUR FUCKING SIX, WHAT THE HELL-!"**_

He didn't see the detonation, but the crackling echo left in the wake of the stone shaking blast he heard certainly suggested that was no mere grenade or warhead.

" _Royal 12 is down!"_

" _Corporal, status!"_

"Green, sir."

" _Have you found cover yet!?"_

"Negative."

The intensity of the roiling quakes grew in magnitude, a mechanical rumbling now recognizable over the din of battle.

" _Forget laying low, get the hell out of here! We're going to hole up here and take our chances, but if we can't regroup with you-"_

Another blast. This time an even brighter flare of blue flashed on his periphery.

" _-don't come looking for us!"_

But the canister was still with them. The _objective-_

"Captain, what about the canister?"

" _Forget the damn canister! It's no good to Command if we're all dead anyways!"_

…

"Yes, Captain."

And then something slammed into his side, tackling him to the earth. He blinked.

 **0-0-0**

He drove his knee into the bastard's chest, _relishing_ in the vibrations that spiked along his flesh- it only meant the little fucker beneath him felt it even harder than he did. His legs _burned_ with pain, shrapnel digging into the flesh, dirt clogging gaping wounds, bones _aching_ from the _murderous_ pursuit he'd embarked on the moment that the explosions had roused him from near death-

He didn't care what kind of armor the little shit was wearing, he'd been on the receiving end of enough melees to _know_ that it couldn't protect your goddamn bones from being broken.

This little _bitch-_

He wrapped his scorched hands around the bastard's neck, heedless of the agonizing pain searing along his whole body, the gaping puncture in his chest- and _squeezed._ This was normally the point when most people would start wheezing, gasping for breath as their throat constricted, their mouths gaping wide in a futile attempt to stave off the suffocation.

The utter lack of _anything_ he heard in response only further fueled his burning rage, the empty red eye pieces of that fucking mask gazing at him blankly. His fingers tightened, the burnt leather gloves digging into his raw and red flesh.

 _Fucking say something you_ _ **BASTARD-**_

He hacked out a glob of blood, dry throat sucking in a breath- he pressed his ample bulk down on the black armored _cunt_ harder, squeezed as much as his burnt and rent and shredded fingers would let him. He pressed the dented faceplate of his helmet right up against the little shit's mask, staring into those eyepieces-

-he wanted to rip them out. Rip it all away, _see_ the being that had _murdered the whole rest of his fucking squad, most of them still practically_ _ **schoolkids with his own fucking eyes!**_

The quaking of the earth around him reached a crescendo now, and he could hear the shouts of the Gallian bastards behind him.

He was gonna die here- but he'd make _damn sure he took one of these fucking snakes with him-_

He gritted his teeth, a dry and cracking chuckle beginning to rise in his tattered throat as he felt hands grasping feebly around his belt- _good._ He wanted the bastard to squirm before they died.

He took the last few seconds of his life to search the mask for something, _anything,_ an indication of life, of humanity, of the _fear and despair_ he so wanted to tear out from the cold-shelled killer beneath his hands.

His bulging eyes eventually fell upon a peculiar pattern carved out in the surface, some strange little gap left in the various segments between the pieces that came together- tilted downwards from the middle, ridges along the inside making it look reminiscent of a toothy mouth- a _grin._ The fucking - _thing-_ was _smiling at him._

And then Friedrich's head exploded.

 **0-0-0**

He sucked in a raspy breath as the metal and bone fragments sprinkled his mask, a thick splatter of almost jelly-like gore following suit. The hulking Imperial slumped down, lifelessly, on top of him, but he kept the barrel of the pistol he'd slipped off the man's waistband pressed against his stomach- just in case.

He'd never seen anyone survive having their head pulverized before, but then again- he hadn't seen anyone get up from a lung shot to pursue him through a forest and tackle him to the ground and nearly strangle him to death either.

That still left the question as to _who_ fired that shot, of course. The only logical conclusion he came to was that it was another sniper; he couldn't imagine any other shooter in a mere militia unit being that pinpoint.

It also meant, that if they hadn't seen him before, if he made a move now- they'd see him for sure.

He spared a peek down at the scorched corpse draped over him, trying to gauge his chances at remaining undetected. He didn't spend much time on it; either way, he wouldn't be able to move to better cover, so he would have to make do.

The fires and explosions had died down now, but the woods were anything but silent. There was plenty of shouting still filtering through the trees, noticeably different in that they were completely untouched by the static filter of radio. It was utterly impossible to discern what they were saying.

"Captain?"

" _Corporal? Where are you?"_

"Pinned down. Gallian snipers, can't move."

" _Shit. We're still stuck in our own cover, there's a full crop of infantry and a tank milling about on that hill, no way in hell we can get to you without springing them."_

Their comm channel fell deathly silent for a few seconds, neither he nor the Captain having anything else to say. _What about the Lieutenant and Sergeant?_

"Are you wounded?" He queried. It felt strange to be the one asking questions for once.

" _Negative."_

" _Status is green, Corporal."_

" _Yeah, I'm fine too, thanks for asking."_

He allowed another breath to filter through his mask. Voices were growing louder, closer to him.

" _Captain, I can't seem to find any sort of squad-wide communications channel on them-"_

" _Squad-level radio? For fuck's sake Lieutenant, look at 'em, some of them are still using trench rifles."_

" _I know,"_ interrupted the Captain. _"I don't need intel. Lieutenant, I want you to open a channel to their squad leader."_

" _You… want to talk to them?"_

" _You'd rather shoot and take your chances with running a charge up into that tank's radiator?"_

More silence. He heard the voices grow closer, a discernable clamor- the different pitches they all carried, without some sort of filter to hammer some uniformity out of it, made it even noisier than the Imperials' panicking shouts.

" _I can put you on an open channel in a 200 meter radius, it'll be quicker than just sifting through what I actually_ _ **can**_ _find."_

" _Fine. Do it."_

 _"Corporal, just lay low."_

The Corporal laid low. Not that it was terribly difficult to do so anyhow.


	11. 11

He waited for what felt like a long time for the Captain to speak again. The Lieutenant had said this would supposedly be faster; the Corporal chose not to dwell on what the decidedly more time consuming option would be.

Maybe he wouldn't even notice. He'd never done well to keep track of time after all.

Either way, it- _felt_ \- long enough for him to start lapsing into a state of half-comfort, if such a thing existed. The voices had ceased being so noisy when he took the time to listen closer and not simply try to filter it all out. He was practically blind now after all, the thin film of jellied viscera plastering his eyes and heap of dead flesh and metal draped over him rendering him immobile to boot. The only thing he _could_ do now was listen.

 _Lay low._ He could do that- he _would_ do that. But it would be easier to remain undetected if he knew his surroundings.

(Would it really? There was a sniper watching him after all.)

"Hey, chin up. You're not gonna find shit staring at the ground like that."

It was warping, muddling. The more he focused on it, the more the little details around him started to fade away.

Almost like peering through a scope in a sense.

He could hardly feel his own body anymore with how still it all was, the concussive reverberations along his shoulder, chest, neck- he knew... somehow, that it should have been painful. Bruises along the armored skin, scrapes and scratches. It was always the little prickles and needles that sent spikes of pain along his nerves, suitably constant reprimands for brief bouts of inadequate precision; and it never slipped away so quickly.

His shoulder tensed, as though testing for that feeling again, see if it yet remained after all. The solid plating gave no response.

"Yeah. Sure. I'll just, let you stroll into the next landmine I _don't see_ sticking outta the dirt then."

The sudden clarity of that voice in particular was somewhat jarring, the pitch and quality of it having... danced around his senses before. The drollness behind it he could recognize now, that dry barb something he had heard before when the Sergeant did speak up. That wasn't it. There was some- loftiness?- to it? Something that held it above... over everything, as though it wasn't really there.

It didn't sound like it _belonged_ there at the very least.

"I'd almost believe you were watching for mines, if you weren't just watching your own feet drag. Come on, eyes up. If Ice Queen's spooked about something up here landmines are the least of our worries anyway."

"Well shit. You sure didn't tell me it was that bad when you dragged me along."

"Would'ya have complained if I did?"

Grumbling, the throaty murmur of some poorly muffled choice of common vulgarities likely directed towards the previous speaker. (At least that was what he assumed, the noise he heard this time wasn't so discernable with the vocabulary he was familiar with). That was something... newer. Close to 'panic'- but at the same time really not at all. It was soldierlike enough in general then, but that same brand of- flamboyancy? - lingered overtop of it all.

Dreamlike.

It wasn't really like _anything_ he supposed. It was nothing, then?

He began to take notice of a steady thumping sound now, growing in not only pace but intensity as well- footsteps. Didn't sound like any boots he'd ever heard. Too much bass, felt like it was drumming on the inside of his head. He could feel his left hand's grip tightening on the unfamiliar frame of the pistol, bony knuckles coiling under a stifling sheath of black cloth.

Something was pounding in his chest. Uncontrolled, roiling waves of... tingling surging through his limbs too. It was a curious thing. Had it always been there? One of those things he'd never noticed before- something that wasn't meant to be taken note of.

He blinked, clenching his fingers tighter, contracting lungs, that-

-well, heat. Wood-splitting, flesh-melting, also not particularly subtle. (He supposed that was why it was a weapon more recently used against him rather than by him.)

Strange feeling, it was, to have it rooted so deep inside. He breathed, let the seething air grate soundlessly out of the filters of his mouth. Flexed his gloves, tested the empty nothingness of the pistol's metal grip against nerveless skin. The heat was already gone. Footsteps had stopped as well.

"Hey, you alright?"

 _Status is green._

There was so much _red_ though, enough to blind him. Trap him, cage him, 'pin' him down, invisible hands sewing the cage of flesh and bone onto him, into the earth. He breathed again, mechanical filters uncaring of the prospect of suffocation.

"Shit, you don't look so good... fucking hell, when'dya get so pale? You look like a ghost."

Featureless specter in the mist. Bony fingers reaching for him-

-pinned down. _'Ice Queen, spooked-'_ they knew where he was. Looking for him. Hands come to pluck him from the lumps of raggedy fibres.

His chest tightened somewhat- it was disturbing.

"Ramona?"

 **0-0-0**

She blinked.

And stifled a yawn, some frayed thread of reasoning still dangling in the recesses of her waking mind reminding her that being on dead body patrol meant that the air around her wasn't exactly the most ripe for mass inhalation. Not that it was that pleasant to begin with, moist dirt and shit and plant matter creating a thick miasma of odor right after spring rains not exactly her idea of aromatic.

That was the countryside for her she guessed. Really going off and 'seeing the world' now, wasn't she?

At least it hadn't been _her_ who'd ended up holding goat shit a few minutes earlier.

' _This is fucked up.'_

Yeah, she guessed it kinda was.

She hadn't seen the corpse until now; just lying there in the dirt, face down, only metres away. The smell had only now caught up with her, snaking past the mucous and ashen gunpowder that clogged her nostrils.

It wasn't quite as bothersome as she'd remembered, barely even eliciting a twitch in her lips let alone the sort of stifled retch her partner in post-battle vulturing let slip at about that moment.

At least the girl didn't just straight up puke out her fucking guts like she had back in Vasel.

The thought somehow sent a prick of annoyance through her nerves, facial muscles twitching ever so slightly. She felt something tickling, trickling down from her nose.

Shit. What was even her name again?

" _Ramona?"_

No no no, not _her_ name, of course she remembered _her own_ name. What was… _her_ name…?

She- that was, the one inhabiting her body, the one with the name 'Ramona'- glanced over at her.

 _Who?_

 _Her._

 _Which her?_

The one that had been the only one speaking for a good while now, and the same one who started speaking again. Muted and dull, playing the natural smoothness of the voice down into some showy paste drained of its vibrance.

It was enough to spur her jaws into feeling for once, her teeth clenching just a little.

"Someone really fucked him up, eh?"

"Yeah."

And she kept staring. She did too. Both of them, neither really moving or saying anything with this lifeless sack of meat before them.

Something bubbled in the pits of her stomach. A steady rhythm that felt like it'd been quietly tapping away at her eggshell skull became more and more apparent.

Was a big one, she could see. Looked like a guy, but to be honest with how mangled some of the body was with the shredded flesh intermingling with scraps of torn leather it could've been a real freak of a woman too.

She wondered what his- well, _its_ \- name might've been. Torn to bits, and now even its head had been blasted into an unrecognizable mulch of metal and meat. Savage, bestial rending- looked more like a wolf had torn into it than anything.

Nothing left of it, nameless.

She shivered a little bit at the thought, gaze unwillingly darting to the girl by her side.

 _Who?_

Her brows furrowed, the sudden creasing and contortion of facial muscles finally seeming to bring a semblance of control rushing into her veins again.

 _Will you kindly fuck off already?_

It fucked off.

And boy, what a hell of a mess it left her with 'control' over.

The permeating stench of death flooding her snot-clogged nostrils, sweat that had been left running out from her soot-tangled hair stinging at her eyes, her chest, heaving underneath the suffocating cloth of her uniform.

Her skull felt like it'd crack under the empty airless drumming beating on it, dry throat like it'd damn well fry… like some poor Imp bastard caught in a tank fire-

-liquefied sludge sizzling on the skillet, like fuckin' runny eggs.

 **0-0-0**

He heard something break the monotony of silence, his arm instinctively tensing and immediately loosening anyway when he heard those last two words loop over on another cycle in his head. 'Lay low', they'd said, not 'shoot', or 'fire', or 'kill them', or… anything, that specified what to do in a contingency.

He'd _thought_ the whole thing would be resolved before it even came to that. It was looking quite clear that he could very well turn out to be wrong.

There was some contorted noise he was hearing, sharp breaths and mangled groans. It was somebody's voice, he could tell that much, but not whose it was. He felt his chest tighten.

'Her' voice- that was, the individual which had **not** been identified as 'Ramona' – cried out.

"Aw hell honey, you alright?"

There was a response, but it was butchered, cut up and staccato, like the words were being ground up and shredded as they were forced out through the pain. He couldn't discern any of it.

He heard a few wet _smacks_ ring out against the trodden earth, the sudden recognition of the sound triggering some semblance of heat returning, this time welling in his throat.

He drew in a raspy breath, sucking a few wisps of stale, 'not exactly aromatic' air through his filters.

 _Lay low._

" _ **Can anyone read me? Over."**_

There was silence at first; he had to hold himself back from responding as well, some neural pulse still zipping through underneath plates of armor almost screaming at him to report to the Captain's uniform voice amidst the baffling chaos.

It wasn't long before other voices trickled onto the airwaves to relieve him of that brief moment of clarity.

" _Largo? Did you hit the fuckin' snooze button again?"_

" _Hey, I didn't touch anything-"_

" _Largo? Rosie? What's going on?"_

" _Heh, someone's cruising for an excuse to chew me out again is all."_

" _Stuff a sock in it- Nelson, what the fuck are you doing!? Get the hell back in formation, do you think we're taking a stroll through the fucking park?"_

" _Ease up, will ya? Yelling ain't gonna help."_

" _Piss off, Potter."_

" _Guys, come on, this really isn't the time…"_

" _Yeah, who_ did _try to hail us just now anyway?"_

" _ **I'm not from your detachment. I need to speak with your commanding officer, where are they?"**_

Another lapse in the chatter, but the two voices lingering close to him hadn't acknowledged the commotion at all.

"Hon-"

"Don't fucking talk to me like that. I'm fine."

 _Status is green._

" _This is Lieutenant Welkin Gunther, Militia Squad 7. You can speak to me."_

Squad 7? The name sounded familiar, but he couldn't quite place where he'd heard it…

" _ **Lieutenant, I'm led to believe that your squad's spotted one of my men, and seeking him out with hostile intent. I'd request that you not."**_

…

…

' _Request'?_

His finger tensed against the pistol's trigger.

' _You want to talk with them?'_

' _Lay low.'_

He was… negotiating with them.

With… now that he considered it, he wasn't even sure whether the militiamen were to be classified as threats or obstacles. It usually didn't make much of a difference. Termination had always been the second easiest and an acceptable way of dealing with both, next to avoidance, after all.

" _We're not seeking anyone out with hostile intent."_

" _Tch, yeah. Pardon our manners if that ain't so obvious,"_ butted in one of the other voices. Their Lieutenant did nothing to silence it for speaking out of turn.

Then again, he supposed their own Captain rarely ever did the same thing himself.

 _The squad is your chain of command._

" _Regardless, I'd rather not be speaking to a faceless voice. We thought we heard fighting over around here, picked up some Imperial chatter suggesting they were caught up with someone else; was that you?"_

He could hear a steady drumming, muted percussive beats, returning. They weren't footsteps. He couldn't even tell if it had anything to do with the two militiamen lingering over him anymore, their sparse and dull chatter having had faded into a warped swill of… noise. There were more important things to listen to now.

"… _ **affirmative. That was us."**_

" _Then… would it be safe to say that you aren't hostile?"_

He breathed another breath, but it did nothing to quell the... _unease_ that wormed, snaked through his body.

" _ **We share a common enemy."**_

He froze, when he heard the next voice come along, a coldless numbness spreading over the black fibres underneath the armor, the swirling nothingness that began to nip at the periphery of his blood splattered eyes doing nothing to still the sudden surge of heat seeping through veins.

'… _lost yourself then?'_

' _ **No.'**_

" _ **Lieutenant Gunther, permission to speak."**_

Welkin Gunther- the 'mastermind son of propagandist corruption to the highest degree' that 'dumped a whole slew of bodies- and tanks-' … somewhere.

Vasel.

This was the unit from the radio. The voice that had spoken, cold and clipped, booming with a quiet clarity over the crackling din of static- the sniper, from the radio _._

" _Permission granted-"_

A great shadow fell over him, blotted out his view. Hands reaching down to pluck him from the yard of bodies- the heaving grunts of the two voices swirling over him failing to register with helmet-muffled ears.

" _\- Wulfstan."_

Blinding sunlight flared into his eyes, the grainy red filter of viscera over the lens doing nothing to shield the squishy orb synapses underneath.

The dreams had always ended before light could restore his vision. But this was not a raggedy boy, come to retrieve him from burlap and blood-sodden grounds of cobblestone.

No. The steelless jaws, helmetless orange hair that greeted his sight, was far more outlandish than anything that could lurk in the shadows of unconsciousness.

Unmasked lips, eyeless orbs going wide. They even had color to them _, blue_ , like the dusty uniform that clung to their unarmoured body.

Soldierlike enough- but at the same time not at all.

It was nothing, then.


	12. 12 Negotiations

The figure looming over him remained still, frozen, even the malleable flesh that comprised their fully illuminated face seeming to have locked in place. Bubbling silence rang in his ears.

The Corporal pondered, briefly, if this was indeed the tail end of a bizarre dream after all- if the alien image his mind had conjured out from the dark was so impossible it was finally enough to grind the swirling murk of illusion around him to a halt. His body was numb. Fibres taut, coiled and heated; he could _feel_ the stillness as though it were tangible, weaving through the mesh beneath his armor.

The voices which he'd thought were so clear just moments before had swam away into the muted recesses of his helmet. His eyes caught movement in their periphery, but it seemed so sluggish, like it was naturally slipping in with the warping trees. The stillness of the nothing-militiawoman seemed to be mirroring his own, meaningless details displayed with such useless clarity.

Scopelike, except the trigger his finger was wrapped around didn't feel quite right.

 _-lost yourself then?_

' _ **No.'**_

" _ **They've found him."**_

The voice returned- Wulfstan? Even the name seemed to sound clearer than the rest. Synapses briefly broke from his eyes, zipped their attention to something beginning to sharpen back into view off to the side. Oddly large, elongated… protrusion of some sort, tapering off to an off-color tip levelled at him. It took a moment to realize that somebody had a lance trained on him.

" _ **Corporal?"**_

" _ **Tell him to lower his weapon immediately."**_

" _ **Corporal, stand down."**_

Stand down? He was already lying down. What threat did he pose to them?

"Hey! Asshole! I said, _drop the pistol_!"

Pistol?

The wiry, unfamiliar weight of it finally seemed to re-register with his nerveless glove, neural snyapses sparking back to life as he realized that the eyeless orbs of the woman kneeling taut still over him were very much fixated on the twiggy barrel levelled at her forehead.

He dropped the pistol.

A rush of movement ensued immediately, blue uniform cloth, bewildered gazes blurring through his unfocused eyes. There was a light _tap_ of metal on metal as the lancer-militia…woman, he noticed as she came back into view, planted her lance flush against his chestplate.

Seemed a rather questionable gesture; would a detonation at this range not put both her and her companion under the threat of severe, if not fatal, injury as well? He glanced up, finding that the lancer's synapse-orbs- an odd green color standing out amongst the thin film of red cast over his vision- betrayed little in the way of hesitation or reconsideration of the action.

There was a certain… sharpness to the way she held her face of flesh and skin as well. Static, but different, somewhat, from the sort of- listless and blank stillness that radiated over the other woman (Ramona… yes, that was her name).

Whatever it was, it was rather apparent that she didn't mind her proximity to the target of her explosive ordnance; at the same time he didn't imagine she was particularly _eager_ to fire either (he imagined she would've done so already otherwise).

" _ **This discussion's going to be problematic if you're going to hold one of my soldiers at gunpoint."**_

" _ **He made the threat first. They won't fire unless he gives them further reason to."**_

The lancer's hair appeared to be a peculiar shade, was hard to discern through the blood on his lenses. It was almost even more jarring than Ramona's appearance, considering the rest of her body was actually amply armored- almost looked as though somebody had stitched her flesh-face onto a perfectly regular soldier's body.

'Stitched'. That didn't sound quite right.

" _ **Wulfstan, who exactly are 'they'?"**_

"… _ **Linton, and Heitinga."**_

Who were _those_? It couldn't be these two, he knew at least one of them wasn't named either 'Linton' or 'Heitinga'.

" _ **Where are they right now?"**_

" _ **Hold on Welks, I think I can see them- look, just over there!"**_

There _was_ something familiar about the way their faces were… molded, the gaudy outlandishness of their hair, certainly _alien-_ somewhat _doll_ -like. Not the sort that the Machine sewed together, but the ones floated within the Glass Pedestals, the ones too clean and fleshy-looking to be wrought from mere string and cloth, to be strewn about on the mist-shrouded stone streets and hanging limply from twiggy fingers, to be... 'stitched' onto a body that was not their own.

…

" _ **Hmm. Well I can't say I blame them for being so startled- Alicia, take two men and head over, bring them all back over here. Wulfstan you, err… stay on overwatch, keep me updated. We need to get some answers."**_

" _ **You can get them without holding one of my soldiers hostage."**_

" _ **I'm afraid I'm not very inclined to believe that, given the lackluster response I've been provided with thus far."**_

…

…

Machine, Glass Pedestal… memories, of _something._ A misty, shrouded mirage of familiarity- was it all merely a dream? Nothing.

He tried to think of the last time he held a real doll within his hands, felt the calloused mesh of it against his gloved palm- it seemed, preposterous, the more he thought of it. Could he even dream of something he had never known?

" _Hey! Audrey! Ramona! Uhh… don't shoot! The guy you just found!"_

Light flared into his eyes, as the lancer woman craned her neck over to the shouting voice and eased away enough for a pocket of sunlight to break through. He blinked, in response.

" _ **Let's try this again. Who are you, and what are you doing in the middle of Kloden?"**_

" _ **Boss, uh… you *did* see that guy they just found, right? Whoever they are, I can tell you for a fact they aren't Gallian and they sure as *hell* don't look friendly."**_

" _ **Yeah, they might as well be asking for a lance to the face walking around anywhere like that- I'm with Largo on this kid, don't think talking's gonna do us much good."**_

" _ **Well shit. Feels like a while since you've openly agreed with me on something."**_

" _ **Piss off Potter."**_

" _ **Rosie, Largo, if you're going to protest against negotiations I would prefer you do so in a manner that doesn't actively undermine them by broadcasting your opinions over the radio."**_

Machine, Glass Pedestal, stiches and dolls- he could hardly follow those dangling threads of thoughts anymore with all the _noise_ over the radio. Even the Captain's voice, Wulfstan's voice, were lost in the maddeningly bolded swill. It was nauseating. He had to focus.

 _On what?_

On _it._

Thundering footsteps. It was all perfectly out of synchronization, thumping beats on the inside of his head growing louder and louder.

" _ **Your… concerns are understandable. But we are not your enemies."**_

It felt like something eased off his chest- a moment later he realized it was because the lancer-woman had turned away from him.

He breathed, organic lungs contracting and letting a raspy breath slip out of the mouthfilter of the facemask that enclosed him so.

It was… close.

 _Too_ close.

'… _lost yourself, then?'_

' _ **No.'**_

" _ **You've been consistently avoiding Lieutenant Gunther's questions. Your soldier was fleeing from the battleground when I first saw him and you yourselves refuse to come out from hiding. None of those things are particularly supportive of your claim."**_

" _ **Exactly. I'm going to give you one chance to thoroughly explain yourself- if you fail to do so, I'm afraid that, given our circumstances, I'll have no choice but to assume that you're hostile."**_

The two militiawomen disappeared into a shuffling mess of uniforms and faces overtop of him, too many to keep track of anymore. He felt a sudden urge to swipe away the blood that clung to his eyepieces.

 _"Who the hell is… he? Is he even human?"_

 _"He's not doing anything… you sure he's actually alive?"_

 _"Hell if I know. Hasn't said a damn thing to us for somebody who was staring down a lance for the last minute or so- what're you doing over here anyway?"_

 _"Guys, pipe down. They're still trying to figure this out over the radio. Ted try to… get him talking, or, up, or something."_

 _"Uhh… yeah. Sure."_

 _ **"We're part of a mercenary unit. We accepted a contract with the Imperial Army, protection detail for a package they were transporting over the country. They turned on us when we were nearing our destination, here in Kloden."**_

…

…

What?

 _"Hey… uhh hey?_ "

That certainly wasn't how he remembered it. Though he didn't remember much to begin with he supposed.

He felt something shift under his eyes, orbs… shifting. Like something was trying to close over them, almost. It helped to sharpen his view ever so slightly, but if anything it just made it more difficult to sort out this conundrum. He could begin to discern the figure in front of him, features swimming amongst a sludge of spotty red.

 _Mercenaries._ He let the word roll about in his head, trying to gauge the appropriateness of it. It felt wrong. Didn't have a place in the rain and rubble, the dust and shrub, blood and dirt.

" _ **That's who we are. That's why we're here."**_

No. It wasn't.

Command, they following orders from Command. That was what they were doing. That was who they were. That was how it always was.

He breathed a raspy breath, let the pressure gathering in his chest scrape out of his mouth filters.

 _ **"**_ _Hell_ oo? Anyone awake in there?"

He felt something tap against the scalp of his helmet. He blinked, looked up, tried to focus on the figure kneeling in front of him. No helmet, no mask, just a fleshy face. All the blood was making it hard to see.

So he reached up with his right hand, as the other was still anchored to the pistol and raising it would likely be seen as a hostile action- and dabbed at the viscera-coated lens of his mask.

The uneven paste of red fluid gave little resistance, sliding off of his eyes rather cleanly and leaving only a few raw streaks of crimson behind. They jabbed into his view like little bloody needles.

 _ **"That… would certainly explain some things. Do you have any idea why they would turn on you though? The Imperial Army doesn't seem like they'd be particularly stingy or lacking in funds to try and avoid holding up their end of a contract."**_

"Oh. I, guess you're alright then."

He blinked again, to let his unfocused synapses resynchronize with his eyes- he saw a boy, brown eyeorbs, oddly shaped dark hair that seemed to stand up from his scalp. The flesh warped and contorted freely as he talked away, toothy maw flapping daintily and eyes arching upward in a… disturbing rush of movement. It was difficult to keep track of.

"We haven't really been introduced yet, have we? Where are my manners, heh. I'm Ted. So, you are…?"

He stared back blankly, deafening silence ringing in his ears. The Corporal paused, still… parsing the question.

 _ **"We… discovered, exactly what it was we were escorting."**_

 _ **"…and?"**_

 _Corporal._ The name actually sounded odd in his head, swirling around in his own garbled voice- he never had needed to identify himself to anyone of course, anyone who had needed to address him before already _knew_ everything they needed about him. 'Corporal' was generally what they defaulted to, the most concise and convenient identifier they could attach to him.

Some…thing, suggested that wouldn't be what these people were looking for. Wulfstan, Ramona, Ted- they wanted a _name_ from him.

 _ **"They wanted to keep it under wraps, of course. Stopped us in the middle of this forest, couple grunts took the package away on foot- and then left the rest to tie up us 'loose ends'. You can see how that turned out for them."**_

 _ **"What**_ **was** _ **the package they were transporting?"**_

"I'm…"

It felt like he could actually _hear_ his own voice for once, reverberating within the carapace of his face for once- almost, echoing, bouncing about in some sort of hollow shell.

His radio transmitter was evidently still off, mask's external speakers on- Ted's face had shifted bogglingly again, eyebrows perking up on edge in what could only logically be deduced as response to his voice.

"…not an enemy."

It felt… about right, to say. For now. It sounded like something the Captain would say at least.

The response he received this time was even more baffling- the boy, after allowing his facial muscles to remain still in a rare moment of reprieve from the unreadable mess of motion, let loose a hesitant chuckle.

"Haha… a joke, then? Whew, glad to see somebody with a sense of humor I guess. Was worried you'd be one of those real downers for a moment there, heh."

That… most certainly wasn't intended to be a joke. But it had apparently served to appease the boy, who was now holding out a fur-gloved hand-

"You, uh, need some help getting up?"

-So he supposed that it had been close enough to a correct response.

 _Status is green._

"No."

"Oh. Well okay, I know we didn't all exactly get off on the right foot, but you can get up now- I mean, unless you really need a dirt nap right now. Although even if that were the case they kinda ordered me to get you up and walking, heh."

He glanced up at the other militiamen- _women-_ all of them female- to gauge their reaction, see if they too were as… satisfied with the situation- but they all had their backs turned to him, huddled around a single radio receiver.

For people who had just earlier been wary of his presence they certainly weren't being very cautious anymore. They were still hanging on the end of the Captain's radio silence it seemed.

He was as well. 'Lay low', was all he was told- no instruction as to what to do in the case of discovery.

The pistol's weight in his left hand suddenly re-registered. Where was his rifle?

He looked back to Ted, but the boy had done little more than remain kneeling there and staring at him- expectantly, perhaps?

 _ **"We were escorting a canister of Ragnite Gas."**_

 _ **"Ragnite Gas? Son of a bitch. Guess those radio reports about Ghirlandaio weren't bullshit after all."**_

 _ **"They must have been trying to take it to their supply base here… and you say they got away with it?"**_

 _ **"Affirmative."**_

The boy's eye orbs- a dark and... solid, shade of brown- seemed to phase in and out every so often, fleshy eyelids closing down upon them in intervals with such speed it was barely noticeable. The sort of thing one would miss if they blinked-

-blinking. Ted was blinking.

 _ **"And so you're stranded here, with no employer and no reason to be in Gallia."**_

 _ **"…that would be an accurate summary of our situation, yes. We owe no allegiance to the Imperial Army and have no reason to be hostile to Gallian forces. I would request that you allow us to part ways without… further incident."**_

There was shift in the ground, rustling leaves. He glanced up as the four other militiawomen turned to face him now, their weapons held level by their waists. He stiffened somewhat as he noticed one pair of gloves- a deep black leather as opposed to the brown furs of the others- awkwardly clutched the length of _his_ rifle. It was easy to distinguish from the others, mechanically carved and dark as opposed to the worn wooden frames of the Gallian weapons. They held it at a strange angle, the hard geometric edges resting uneasily in their right-handed grip.

His gaze trailed upwards of its own accord, to see exactly who it was that was so unnaturally hefting his weapon- he saw a familiar shock of orange hair, a blankly staring set of blue eye orbs. 'Ramona'. She must've picked the rifle off the ground without him knowing in all the commotion.

 _ **"I'm afraid I can't just let you go that easily and trust in your good word."**_

 _ **"The alternative would be an undoubtedly bloody engagement for both of us."**_

 _ **"Perhaps- but if you were willing to give yourselves up, we could take this discussion to an, at least, more secure location. If you're really mercenaries as you say- then**_ _ **the Gallian militia may even have some use for your talents."**_

 _ **"…are you offering us a contract?"**_

 _ **"Maybe. We still need to make sure you're telling the whole truth- and even then, this is the sort of thing my Captain would handle. But as you said, the alternative would be an undoubtedly bloody engagement.**_ **Surrender** _ **, and perhaps we can all benefit out of this."**_

 _ **"I dunno about this Boss. Something about them don't sit right with me."**_

A moment of stillness hung in the blood-tinged forest air- his hand tensed ever so slightly around his pistol. None of the militiawomen made a move to level their rifles at him yet, but Ted was starting to subtly inch away from him now- and Wulfstan was still watching him.

If it did come to a firefight, there wouldn't be much he could do. And even he could understand that the Captain was in no position to bargain.

He could feel his gaze trailing towards his own rifle again.

 _ **"Very well. We're coming out from the rocks at the bottom of the depression, hold your fire."**_

 _ **"Copy that. Group leaders, fingers off the trigger, get down there and escort them back to us. Keep it in formation, let's not linger too long in these woods."**_

 _ **"Hey Blood Money, how many you got with you?"**_

 _ **"Two others."**_

 _ **"Alright. Just hand over your weapons, don't try anything funny."**_

 _ **"Copy that. Over and out."**_

And that was that. The Captain gave no further direction to him- and so the Corporal complied with their last directives over the radio, offering his pistol handle-first to Ted.

After a moment's hesitation, the boy took the weapon from his hands.

A strange feeling of weightlessness washed over the Corporal.

Somebody else spoke, the voice's high pitch meshing poorly with the firmness it tried to address him with. He didn't even bother trying to discern which of the four militiawomen it came from.

"Alright, get off the ground. You're coming with us."

He got off the ground, and went with them.


	13. Chapter 13

**I'll try to keep this brief, hopefully won't interrupt the story like this too much more often. Just a couple updates I figured would be worth yapping about**

 **Yeah, university life's been a little bit of a bitch, but I mostly just needed a break from writing I think- recently went back and redid the prologue (Chapter 2, as I've not so subtly noted in the summary now) ,and a little earlier than that drew up some art for the story too. It's up on my dA account, same username, for those who're interested. Would rather not just leave the link here cuz I've not had much success inserting those on ffnet**

 **Far as the chapter itself goes, eh. I'm trying to somewhat break out of the structure I've been following for a little while now, while still keeping some aspects of it around. I'm not really happy with the first and last parts of the chapter, but there hasn't been much I've been able to necessarily** ** _correct_** **after being stuck on them either. Pacing just feels a wee bit off, I guess I'm still trying to get a feel for how the narration ought to be there too.**

 **And idk how the hell to naturally say this _anywhere_ , but seeing how I don't seem to be really drawing in *new* readers with updates I figure I might as well dump it in here with everything else- the perhaps somewhat peculiar story title is a line from a song, Big Sky Theory by Dozer- I think it's worth placing that in as a disclaimer? Seeing how it's probably not obvious to most people at least.**

 **0-0-0**

It was a quiet walk for the most part. She was glad for it to be honest- she found herself thinking that a lot lately. Hurt too damn much to talk these days, and her voice always seemed to come out hoarse, like some smoker's rasp, when she did. It reminded her too much of the stench of burning gunpowder now.

Ramona sniffled, snorting back an errant line of watery mucous spilling out from her nostrils. It left a tingling sensation on the little patch of skin it had touched on, the temperate woodland air setting those nerves aflame with a terrible itch.

 _Should probably do something about that._

Yeah, she probably should.

Her gloves remained firmly anchored to the cold surface of that rifle she'd picked off the ground. She couldn't particularly say _why_ she chose to hold it in her hands, as opposed to over her back- she sure as hell wasn't familiar with the design, and the scope seemed to suggest it was supposed to be used by sniper. Or some kind of marksman- definitely a better shot than herself.

...it was a good bit lighter than her own weapon she guessed. Maybe she'd switch them out when her back felt a little more tired.

"Ah. You got pollen allergies too?"

The sun flared in her eyes a little, through the thick layers of branches and leaves overhead, as she glanced over to Audrey- the lancer woman apparently having decided _now_ would be a good time to try and strike up a conversation, in this dead fucking silence that was draped over the canopy. The quietly rumbling engine and rolling treads of their LT's super-tank had at least prevented that sudden question from turning too many gazes at the moment.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ramona hissed back- a good bit more venomously than she'd intended. Evidently moreso than Audrey had expected too, the woman's eyes seeming to droop just a little bit at her response.

Ramona could feel the beginnings of a frown creasing over her lips. Consequently it ended up reminding her of the dryness burning in her mouth too- the sound of sloshing water in her still nearly full hip flask made her numbed hands twitch, but only just a little.

"Well, was just curious. Noticed you've had a runny nose pretty consistently ever since we got here is all."

"You've only known me since we were deployed here. I've had a runny nose ever since I got caught up in all this damn fighting, it's got nothing to do with pollen or allergies." She punctuated that with another wet inhalation.

The words rolled off her tongue without her really thinking about it this time, those bubbling thoughts having grown too difficult to contain- old habits surfacing she supposed. At this moment it was pretty much the last thing she'd meant to say though, dismissive, curt, and probably enough to prompt even more questions she as sure hell wasn't in the mood to answer.

She saw Audrey's shoulders slump, such a painfully noticeable motion with how the lance slung over her shoulder visibly listed. The woman didn't say anything else after that.

Ramona's mind lacklusteredly searched for something else to talk about, the sorts of things they usually would've spoken of in… days long past. It felt incredibly strange to think of it in that way. They'd spent almost two hours jabbering away about… something in their foxhole just last night. She couldn't even remember at this point.

…she couldn't remember much of _anything_ over the past few days. The more she tried to think of it, the more it seemed to slip further and further away from her consciousness, off into the empty woods.

Empty. And quiet, for that matter- they had a fucking tank rolling through the damn place for the Valkyur's sake, how the hell was it _quiet?_

 _Shit._

Seemed their brief little verbal exchange had in fact managed to draw a couple uneasy gazes by now; of particular note, that bespectacled yes-woman Coren.

Her clear blue eyes glanced back at Ramona from behind dirt-speckled glasses, an arched eyebrow and slight misalignment in her lips. It was the sort of thing that posed a silent question of sorts, in contrast to the blank stares of the two or three other slack-jawed rookies that had turned their heads.

Was hard to gauge whether it was meant to be more along the lines of a 'are you okay?' or 'the fuck do you think you're doing?' She guessed nobody would've pegged Private Coren for a hardass at first sight, but the blondie seemed a little more tense than usual; nothing too overt, but Ramona had gotten a pretty good sense for that sort of thing. Fingers were gripped little more tightly around her rifle, the brown surface of her gloves stretched taut with the tension- posture slightly off from her usual upright stance, head just barely hunched forward.

If Coren was actually thinking anything though, she didn't bother to verbalize it. Nobody else in the squad seemed particularly keen on talking, now that Ramona thought of it- maybe that was why everything seemed so much quieter than usual.

She broke off her gaze from Coren once she realized _she'd_ lapsed into blankly staring, lost in the throes of her own thoughts. She turned her eyes back down to her boots, and the damp root-tangled soil scrolling along beneath her, just hoping any chance she'd be questioned further would just disappear into the blur of dirt and bramble. Thin lines of fluid tickled at numbed nerves around her nostrils.

Several moments passed by with nary a word spoken, so she decided she'd made the right choice- for once. Even for her morning routine, she was being- certainly _feeling_ \- a good deal more unpleasant than usual.

A glint caught her eye, some stray rays of sunlight reflecting off of something on her wrist- oh. Her watch.

It was already past noon.

 **0-0-0**

 _"So that's it? This is_ _ **actually**_ _your plan, Captain?"_

The Sergeant's voice blared over their internal comm channel in a burst of garbling static. It was enough to pull the Corporal's attention back to his immediate surroundings.

 _"Yes. Was I not clear enough over the radio?"_

 _"Clear eno-? You fed them same half-baked bullshit, dumped our objective in the middle of the woods, and got our asses captured without saying another word to us, what the hell kind of a plan is that?"_

The Corporal craned his neck around, at least as naturally as he could with his arms held up and gloved hands together behind his helm- it was a strange stance the militiamen had insisted they all take up.

 _"One that's still being worked on- and keeping us_ alive. _"_

His three squadmates marched onward, still facing forward with their arms up in the same posture as his own. Generally, just giving no obvious indication that they were speaking much at all.

…that most likely the whole point of it all, now that he thought of it. It was better for warding off suspicion. With that in mind, he quickly turned his own gaze back forward, eyes watching the earth for protruding roots as well- he was finding it difficult enough to keep his boots steady on the uneven ground as it was. It was strange, unfamiliar, unpredictable, solidly packed dirt sporadically giving way to crumbling soil or mud. Even the unkempt plains and fields they'd treaded before this had at least been consistent in their composition.

 _"And how long do you suppose that's gonna last? You really think a buncha trigger-happy farmers and schoolboys won't just shoot us in the back and leave us for dead? Got no reason to keep us alive for sure."_

 _"I… have to agree, Captain. Even overlooking the attitude of just these Militia troops, the ruling class of Gallia has never been particularly accepting of foreign intervention…"_

He blinked as a resounding _crack_ rang out from beneath his boots, a fallen twig having snapped under the weight of one of his footsteps.

 _"As far as they've let on, they don't know anything about who we're actually with. Even the Imp patrol didn't. We're just four guns for hire caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, loyal to anyone willing to contract us- and from what we've seen and heard, they're not in the best place to reject help. Long as you two keep your doubts to yourself-_ as usual _\- they'll have no reason to antagonize us."_

Their comm channel fell silent after that, the brief discussion ending just as quickly as it began.

…

…

…

He couldn't hear any of the militiamen talking amongst themselves anymore either. He couldn't hear much of _anything_ , save for their own footsteps and the rumbling din of the Gallian tank behind them.

Something about that left him feeling uneasy.

He passed by a peculiarly shaped tree, ever so slightly having to angle his walking path rightward towards his squad to avoid it. The wood that plated its mass was a paler shade than the rest that sprouted from the earth, the branches devoid of leaves and hanging limply from its trunk. They stretched out towards him, thin wood projections brushing against the skin of his armor.

It felt a lot like having fingers enveloping his body.

He felt something tighten under his chestplate.

…

He had _questions_ , he realized. Unaddressed uncertainties- how were they to salvage the operation now that they'd made direct contact with the Gallians? How would they wipe out all these witnesses, as per standard procedure? How would they locate their primary objective in the middle of the woods?

The Captain had said nothing of it. Neither the Lieutenant nor Sergeant had asked, and none of them seemed to be the type to gloss over glaring details such as that.

He waited, for a while trying to count away the time by the pace of his footsteps- he ended up losing track when he stepped on another twig.

He exhaled, letting the air seep out the front of his mask- the pressure on his chest not easing as much as he'd been expecting.

There was a very tangible chance that they could fail to finish this operation.

"Captain."

It slipped his mouth before he thought it over any further, the sound of his own voice, echoed back to him in his helmet, startling him. He blinked, breathed, in drawn-out intervals, tried to ease away the pressure building in the fibres under his chestplate- tried to ease the... fuzziness? Trembling, in his hands. As though he were just steadying his aim.

But he wasn't steadying his aim, because that Ramona woman had his rifle, and that Ted boy had the pistol he'd picked up.

Seconds had ticked by now, well beyond his sense of time.

 _"What is it, Corporal?"_

The canister, the objective, the mission- what were they to do now? They all seemed valid questions to ask, clarifications on their new goals.

"Why did you save me?"

…

The Corporal blinked again, parsing his own words as he heard them parroted over their comm channel. That hadn't been what he'd meant to ask.

A deafening silence followed, as he awaited the answer; the sound of churning tank treads bubbling away into nothingness, the crackle of boots trampling stray twigs muffled by the strange ringing in his ears.

One second.

His Captain would need time to digest the information, as always.

Two seconds.

Words were precious on the radio, after all.

Three seconds.

None of them had been particularly concise in their speech as of lately, however- he hadn't given it any real thought until now.

Four seconds.

A small flare of static, and then the Captain's voice came with his answer. It was clear, stoic, as the Corporal tended to remember it. And yet, he didn't quite understand what the Captain meant for once.

 _"Somebody had to."_

 **0-0-0**

"Odd bunch for a couple mercs, aren't they?"

The unfamiliar voice shook Ramona from her aimless study of the so very fascinating dirt beneath her boots (she actually did manage to pick out little insects trickling over tree stumps every so often to her own surprise); she wasn't quite so sure at first if it was really directed toward her, but the relative proximity of it seemed to suggest it.

She craned her neck around to face where the voice had come from, and ended up staring blankly- again- at a figure she hadn't seen before. Well, it was somebody in their squad, clearly- blue uniform, and all the whatnot. There were a lot of people in the squad though. She probably just didn't remember seeing him around before.

Or maybe not- his hair had a peculiar shade to it, a deep silver, almost. She would've liked to think that would've been something she would remember.

...okay, so... he was a little bit of looker, she had to admit... sharp blue eyes, and a nice lopsided grin on his face that she hadn't seen often enough these days with all the doom and gloom cast over everyone. Or at least herself. Seemed nice enough, she guessed?

"Sorry, who were you again?"

 _are you fucking kidding me_

He didn't seem to take it personally, if his response was anything to go off of at least. Though his tone of voice didn't quite match up with the smile he wore.

"Private Regard- just a sniper, don't worry, you wouldn't have seen me around before."

"Ah. I see."

...the more she looked at him, the less it looked like he was smiling at all.

 _Oh... **Shit**_

She blinked, had to resist the urge to animatedly shake her head as though to clear up her eyesight.

Wasn't a fucking grin he was wearing, it _was a goddamn scar trailing out from the edge of his lips._

"So, the mercs? Just asking, cuz I figured you two were probably the closest to 'em at first contact."

"You'd probably be better off asking Linton here about that."

Oh, right, Audrey. She'd been there beside Ramona the whole time- pretty eagerly throwing her under the bus now, wasn't she?

...she probably deserved it. Though the way the lancer had delivered her response, without the usual smarminess that more or less amounted to giving her a nudge, wink, and 'gotcha' put her off a little. Sounded almost _deflated_ , really- the hell was there to be all mopey about anyway? It wasn't as though she'd completely blew up on Audrey or anything.

"What about them?" She managed to spit out without so much as a stumble, despite the mess of thoughts zipping around her brain she was still racing to catch up with.

She blinked again, and finally noticed that the sniper-man... err, Private Regard- had significantly hardened his visage from when she'd first laid eyes on him. Or maybe that was just how he'd always been.

"Well they don't exactly seem quite as _friendly_ as they claim to be, do they? One of them had you at _gunpoint, after all._ "

Ah, yes. That.

...she waited on him to elaborate, expecting it to come to some sort of _point_ \- so far all he'd done had been to remind of her of some shit she'd already known. And really would've rather not have had to think about at the moment.

He sighed.

"Never mind. Guess it was my fault for expecting anyone 'round here would have half a head's worth of common sense."

 _Asshole._

She managed to hold her tongue though.

"Just keep your wits about you," he said. "I wouldn't go to sleep without a rifle and a good couple ammo clips close at hand if they're sticking around is all." And then he slunk away- this time to Private Coren, she noticed out the corner of her eye.

...was the fucker playing womanizer or something, _here,_ of all places? She snorted. And regretted it, not expecting the influx of mucous. Strange as hell way to go about flirting for sure. Militia just took in all sorts.

She strained her ears, expecting to hear some crappy pickup line seeing how the merc topic was an obvious flop- watched him for that dumbass grin-

-oh, right. Not grin. _Scar._

And he didn't seem to bother with formalities this time at all, just said something- was hard to tell exactly at that distance- but it sounded like a warning of sorts.

And then he moved on.

 _Fuck._

Private Regard was just passing around some friendly neighborhood warnings about the four escaped convicts in their ranks.

 _I'm such a fucking idiot, shit_

Still, she frowned, and not at her own behavior- figuring most people in the damn squad probably had some healthy suspicion about them anyway. The guy could've been a little less of a prick about it all to boot.

...she supposed he _did_ attempt to start it off like a casual conversation. And then she'd dropped the ball on that pretty hard.

Poor guy was probably ordered to do it now that she thought of it- he sure didn't seem to be the type to take initiative with that kinda thing.

 _ **Fuck.**_

...

Maybe it wasn't an entirely wasted effort though. Woke Ramona up a little for sure- enough to put her on edge and realize she was holding a rifle picked off the ground that she hadn't even bothered to check for goddamn defects or ammo on.

 _ **FUCK.**_

She didn't do it though- was a little _late_ to bother now, on the march. It'd do her better to swap it out for her own weapon.

Yeah, that was a good idea. She'd do that.

Halfway through the motion of switching the rifle positions though, she ended up diverting a little attention- watching the four mercenaries in question.

Just a quick glance, at the very least make sure they were still where they were supposed to be and not sneaking around , covertly snapping the necks of her squadmates or something. She had to squint, just to try and discern their somewhat distant figures. They marched along rigidly, holding their arms back around their heads- and never faltering in posture. Didn't seem to be talking much amongst themselves either.

...it was odd how well they all seemed to blend in with the dimly lit, drab palette of the woods. The solid black armor encasing them had seemed a lot clearer up close.

…

Certainly much more unsettling. She mostly just ended up recalling the one she and Audrey'd found camping out under a corpse, their utter stillness and silence.

They didn't seem… 'normal' as it was already, if she wanted to think of it that way- sure didn't seem to be great conversationalists- but their masks just made it worse, didn't leave an inch of skin or anything recognizably _human_ on them at all.

Even with the Imps, she could at least still see their eyes.

 _peeled back and widened with horror on their pallid faces_

If anything, the patterning of it looked quite morbid. Sinister, even.

…

Maybe that was the whole point. They were mercenaries after all, weren't quite so bound by motivations of patriotism, or glory, or honor, or desperation-

 _a futile desire to do something greater with their lives_

-whatever the fuck people joined up for. Maybe they just took some twisted sense of satisfaction in killing. Maybe that was just how they wanted themselves to look.

…

Either way, questionable fashion sense or not, they didn't seem like the sort of people _anybody_ wanted to have around. And the LT was planning to draw up a contract with these guys?

That line of thought proved to be a sobering one.

Having one of their rifles in her hands didn't feel quite so weightless anymore either; it was as though just holding the thing was staining her gloves with blood. Felt an _awful_ lot like her own issued weapon now that she thought of it, could even feel the textured wood on her glove when before she'd been under the impression it was some sort of smooth metal. The grip was starting to feel a lot more natural as well.

She reached up with one hand, finally willing enough energy into her limbs to swipe away the fluid flowing from her nose. It left a red streak on her skin.


	14. 14 Noise

" _Enjoy the sun while you still can folks, cuz we've got plenty of rain coming in soon if the big ol' clouds looming on the horizon are any indication-"_

 _ **"-well, y'know what I heard? I heard that there's a bit of smoke in the skies- that a handful of**_ **our** _ **dear, 'noble' troopers on the homefront had no qualms about**_ **looting** _ **the same farms they were supposedly liberating-"**_

 __ _"-once more regulating the flow of much-needed food supplies throughout the nation-"_

 _ **"-gorging themselves fat on their own little fucking spoils of war-"**_

 __ _"-unfortunately not without tragedy, however, several families having found to have been cruelly slaughtered during the Imperial occupation-"_

 _ **"-and what did they do after it all? Why, turned their guns on our own fellow countrymen of course!"**_

 __ _"General Von Damon expressed no small amount of contempt for the men and women responsible for such a vile act, a sentiment evidently shared by his troops as well-"_

 _ **"-y'know, I even have a few copies of the resulting court martial reports right here; because the fucking officers who caught the goddamn savages pulling this shit probably**_ **knew** _ **the truth would never get out otherwise-"**_

 __ _"-several more zealous individuals apparently taking justice into their own hands, and executing the few Imperial prisoners they did capture-"_ __

 _ **"Ladies and gentlemen, our**_ **heroes** _ **. A buncha bloodthirsty animals fresh out of the academy, so hellbent on raping and pillaging they had to do it on home soil-"**_

 __ _"-an officer on the General's command staff, who chose to remain anonymous, wanted to take the opportunity to remind the Army that such rash behaviour, regardless of how justified it might've seemed, was unacceptable according to regulations-"_

 _ **"Let me ask this, 'fellow countrymen'- what the hell is the point of continuing to fight, if the ruling class is just going to keep fucking you over? Why bleed for the fat sons of bitches, when they're just standing with a gun at the back of your head-"**_

 __ _"-and he wished to remind all of us, that fury ought to be tempered with honor and restraint, lest we stoop to the level of our enemies-"_

 _ **"-so yes, fellow countrymen, eat well in the days to come. Gorge on the bloodstained scraps of pig feed that our heroic murderers in uniform throw at you-"**_

 __ _"-and we wish only the best of luck to them as they march off to support their Militia counterparts in Kloden. Eat well and rest well, people of Gallia- we'll have some more interviews with the troops, as well as more on the weather, after the break."_

 _ **"-and for those of you that still don't believe me? A little bird came to me, just yesterday. She sang quite the peculiar song-"**_

 __ _"_ _-Stock und Hut_ _,_ _Steht ihm gut-"_

 _ **"-she said to me: 'Mr. Rorschach- if that truly is your name- I am aware of your notoriety amongst the people of this country, for spreading what they- and I- used to believe were naught but destructive lies and slander'-"**_

 __ _"_ _-"Wünsch dir Glück!"_ _,_ _Sagt ihr Blick,_ _"_ _Kehr' nur bald zurück!"-"_

 _ **"-it is clear to me now, that you are the only one who is willing to tell the truth, however vile it is. It is clear to me now just how vile the truth in question is-"**_

 __ _"_ - _Sieben Jahr, Trüb und klar, Hänschen in der Fremde war-"_

 _ **"-so much so, that I cannot trust that the Army would have the courage to say it. I cannot blame them. I have a brother in the Militia, and had I heard he had committed such atrocities I do not think I could bear to so much as even think about it-"**_

 __ _"-_ _Doch nun ist's kein Hänschen mehr- Nein, ein großer Hans ist er-_ _"_

 _ **"-do not believe anything less than this: three men from the Army, whatever their status, whatever their state of mind at the time, however drunk they may have been off of their ill-gotten spoils of victory, however young and inexperienced they were-"**_

 __ _"-_ _Braun gebrannt_ _,_ _Stirn und Hand, Wird er wohl erkannt?-"_

 _ **"-nothing can excuse what they did to us. I cannot speak of it, even here, through mere paper and ink. But know that even the Imperial soldiers who came before them treated us better than they did that night."**_

 __ _"-Schwester spricht: "Welch Gesicht?" Kennt den Bruder nicht."_

 _ **"The newsmen will tell the tales that they wish- I cannot attest to the truth behind the words that they do speak, but I know that there many they shall never speak. I understand why, but I cannot condone it any longer."**_

 __ _"-Kommt daher sein Mütterlein, Schaut ihm kaum ins Aug hinein-"_

 _ **"That is why I tell you this. I hope you receive this letter, even if you ultimately choose not to share it. If you do, wish my brother well."**_

 __ _"Ruft sie schon: "Hans, mein Sohn! Grüß dich Gott, mein Sohn!""_

 _ **"Tell him that Little Wolf will always be with him- even though Mama Wolf has passed on.""**_


	15. 15

They'd been ushered through the conglomeration of dirt craters and tents with a subtle haste, another woman- one of the many soldiers the Corporal hadn't yet seen- leading them down a shallow trench that skirted along the more populated parts of the Militia's base. He hardly caught a glimpse of her before they'd descended single-file into the narrow passage, just a small crop of black hair quickly disappearing behind the rigidly marching forms of his three squad members.

Another three or four militiamen marched behind them. He didn't turn his head to see who or how many- wasn't much different from having a tank herd them onwards anyway.

Most of the troopers just seemed to live in shallow craters dug in between the trees. He couldn't directly see inside them, over the dirt and sandbags that crested the trench and uneven ground above them, but he had caught glimpses of the militiamen that had accompanied them through the woods slipping into the small craters earlier.

He might've heard them referred to as 'foxholes' before.

They passed maybe a few dozen, based off of the varied cacophony of voices he could hear- laughing, yelling, jeering, overlapping strings of gibbering left entirely unregulated. It was impossible to try and process all of it.

" _-heard the news-"_

" _-got a shipment of ponchos coming in apparently-"_

" _-cards? Yeah I got cards-"_

" _-can't wait for another fucking cracker and canned shit dinner-"_

It was disorienting- again. Not unlike when the militia squad had first encountered them, when he was still underneath that corpse. He blinked, trying to clear away the clouds of fuzziness that were beginning to gather on his lenses. Almost broke his hands from their rigid stance to try swiping at the lenses too, strip away the little dots of red that seemed to phase in and out of his vision with each blink.

It wasn't blood, he at least knew that much, and it wasn't as though he'd never seen them before. They usually just went away on their own eventually- and even when he did try to rub them off, it never worked.

" _Somebody-"_

" _-once told me-"_

It was a familiar situation then, he supposed. Nothing to see, only noise to listen to. Was this something that was going to happen often amongst these militiamen?

…

The Captain wouldn't keep them here for long, would he?

" _Heh, yeah, well what I can say? I never was the sharpest tool in the shed-"_

He _hoped_ the Captain wouldn't keep them here for long. In Gallia, for long. In all the dirt, and the trees, and the bramble, the rain, the flaring orange hair topping off piercing blue eyes, all the blinking, the breathing, and… muddledness.

He ended up closing his eyes, shutting off one avenue of rampant sensory input. The little red spots lingered in his vision, but it was easier to ignore _them_ than the constantly shifting walls of uneven dirt and tangled roots along their sides. And then, he picked out a small gaggle of voices that at least sounded… a little more coherent, over the others. A little more strung together, in a chain of verbal retorts he could try and follow along at least.

" _Fuck! Ye didn't tell me you had a nice guy waiting for you back home-"_

" _Aww, come on, lemme have a look-"_

" _Whoo! Well ain't that a real looker."_

" _Guys, please-"_

" _Ah don't be like that- what's his name anyway?"_

 _name_

He almost walked into the Sergeant's back.

But didn't quite- despite the filter of uproarious noise over everything, he'd heard the sudden lapse in footsteps a few moments before his blurred eyes snapped open and registered that the short column his squad had been herded into had come to a halt.

His boots slipped in the dirt beneath him, legs stumbling in a delayed response as he scrambled to catch himself a few footstep-lengths away from the Sergeant. But he managed to so, and without moving his hands away from his helm, even as instincts seemed to tug at them to go grasping for balance at the walls of dirt cordoning them in.

If the Sergeant had noticed any of that, he didn't show it. The militiamen behind them certainly seemed to notice, however, if the quiet surge of laughter from their direction was any indication.

There was a tightness in his chest again, tangible, solid- some _thing_ beneath all the synthetic cloth and armor. And he was still hearing footsteps. Pounding, one-two thumps against his head.

" _Erik. His name's Erik. Last I heard from him he was doing nursing work in the refugee slums."_

" _Well. S'good to hear he has a heart good as yours."_

 _heart_

He straightened out his back, shuffled a few steps away from the Sergeant to restore the uniform distance between them that they'd marched at. A buzzing throb of pain pricked at his shoulder, bouncing off the thick armor and padding and reverberating down the length of his arm- as though a bullet had impacted there.

" _Aww, shucks. I'll be sure to pass that onto the next Imp I gun down."_

" _Ha!"_

But a bullet _hadn't_ just impacted there- the last time he'd been shot was… hours ago, at least.

… _lost yourself, then?_

 _ **No.**_

" _ **Captain Var**_ **rot's bus** y at the moment. You'll have to wait out here until she's finished."

He knew that voice. In person, it was certainly quieter than booming in his ears over the radio, but it still resonated firmly over the din of her chattering comrades. He could feel her eyes on him again, pinning him down with invisible fingers through her scope lenses while she herself still laid beyond his vision.

But she wasn't watching him through her scope lenses- that was-

-hours ago, at least.

…

How long had they been marching for?

"And how long will that take?"

Even the Captain's voice had started to blend with all the meaningless nonsense around him.

 _Somebody had to._

"As long as she needs."

There was a pause. And then he saw it- a flare of organic lens past the Sergeant's shoulder, past the Lieutenant's shoulder, past the Captain's shoulder, a little speck of soft brown peering back at him from underneath a mane of black hair.

"You. Get back in line."

It took a moment for the Corporal to realize that the voice- the radio sniper, Wulfstan- was coming from that black-haired, soft-brown-eyed face's mouth. _Soft_ \- that wasn't how a sniper's eye was supposed to look, was it?

"Get back in line."

The renewed gaggle of laughter from behind him couldn't obscure it either- that voice, the radio sniper, Wulfstan's voice, was coming from the unmasked lips beneath those soft brown eyes.

…

Addressing _him_. He'd slipped ever so slightly out of alignment with the rest of his squad, somehow.

Brown eyes, black hair. Like Ted.

Another moment passed, long enough for her to blink as well.

He shuffled back in line.

 **0-0-0**

The dryness of the dirt underneath her ass was a welcome change. She'd almost forgotten what it felt like to _sit_ on something that wasn't soaked with rainwater rather than incessantly march over it. Maybe as a direct consequence, this was the first time in a while she could recall where her nostrils weren't overflowing with fluid.

" _You don't think your sweet little Erik would shoot an Imp?"_

" _No way."_

Yeah. Ramona bet a lotta people had thought the same about _her_ once. But that was neither something that she had the energy to mull over at the moment, nor what her brave comrades in a nearby foxhole were so heartily broadcasting to the whole encampment about- so, on this rare and momentous occasion, she managed to let it slide off her conscience.

" _Come on, you're engaged now ain't ya- you can't vouch for his_ _ **shooting**_ _skills?"_

" _Or is he the kinda guy that prefers to get in… a lil deeper instead?"_

" _You know, sometimes I forget you idiots were in university not too long ago."_

So that was what university life was like then. Cute. No wonder the LT wouldn't shut up about birds and bees.

She cracked a grin at the thought, trying to picture just what specific fields of 'biology' their intrepid leader might've dabbled in. Dearie Sergeant Melchiott seemed quite enraptured by all his antics for sure, goat droppings incident notwithstanding. 'The Virgin Breadmaker and Well Hung Medical Student' – sounded like a play suited for the regent's own theatre. Maybe she'd pass the idea on to Audrey. The woman had dabbled in the arts herself, if she recalled correctly.

 _What specific fields of 'arts'?_

…

…

…wow, that was really something she didn't want to think about.

A shadow fell over her- she tilted her head up, to make eye contact with Audrey as she crested the mounds of dirt over their foxhole, balancing a pair of trays in her two hands. Not very easy to maintain it, with… certain thoughts stirred up by a very unexpected and unwelcome question lingering in her mind. She matched the tentative smile on Audrey's lips with one of her own, the discomfort the lancer woman had shown a few hours earlier around her still fresh in her mind.

"Well? Don't keep me in suspense, what flavor of slop did they dole out this time?"

Took a lot of effort to keep the actual irritation behind that statement out of her question. She couldn't tell _why_ she was feeling all pissy still,honestly. Just seemed to bubble up out of nowhere again.

The sigh that Audrey gave her in response didn't help, but at least the woman stopped lingering out in the open like some idiot schoolboy losing his nerve in front of a pretty girl, descending down into their foxhole.

"Does it really matter? We both know you're just gonna throw most of it out again anyways."

"And yet you still bothered to bring the shit back," she replied, with an immediate wave of nausea hitting her this time at the sight of a viscous lump of peas and dollop of chunky sludge on the tray that was offered to her. She actually had to look away from it this time.

She could almost hear the fucking frown of motherly disapproval in Audrey's tone.

"Ramona, you've been skipping out on vegetables and meat for the past three days, you're not gonna survive on just a chunk of stale crackers every couple hours-"

"I've been through worse." Wasn't _entirely_ a lie actually- she didn't make it big in the modelling industry without cutting down on her diet every so often. Boycotting vegetables was a new thing though.

She heard another sigh, but no follow-up speech at least. Just the sound of scraping tin as Audrey presumably went through with the usual routine of heaping Ramona's share of viscera-peas and gore-beef onto her own tray. And as usual, Ramona only even looked up to accept her tray of two finger-length crackers when she was sure none of that stuff was left.

"Thanks," she murmured.

She meant that too- as always. Too many people she used to know would've insisted pointlessly for another two minutes or some shit and just ended up bitterly ceding when she refused to budge anyway. People like… like…

…

…she couldn't really remember, now that she thought of it.

"You're welcome."

She hoped Audrey meant that too.


	16. 16

" _Corporal?"_

His eyes snapped open at the sound of the Lieutenant's voice, the static-filtered words clearly resonating over the radio.

 _"Corporal, can you hear me?"_

He _could,_ actually. Another man, unarmed, unlike everybody else they'd been greeted by up to that point, had come out into the trenches to usher them inside a short tunnel dug into the earth some time ago. The four militiamen that had been behind the Corporal had been promptly dismissed, and with a thick barrier of dirt and wood between them and the outside and a closed door between them and the talking further down the tunnel, there was finally a reprieve from all the noise.

He hadn't been expecting the Lieutenant to break it.

"Yes."

…

"Lieutenant," he quickly added.

" _Good. Just keep quiet and stay in formation. Let the Captain do the talking and don't draw any more attention to yourself than you already have."_

He felt a strange surge of… something, beneath the armored skin of his face at that last remark. A rush of _heat,_ again-

 _wood-splitting, flesh-melting_

 _-_ but not quite. It wasn't a good thing though, he knew that much by now.

" _I know this situation is… disorienting. But we must remain level-headed and adapt to it accordingly. Do you understand, Corporal?"_

He felt the need to reign it in, actively quell the surge of warmth underneath the nerveless layers of his body for once. But the more he tried, the stronger it only seemed to get.

A steady _thump, thump_ was beating in his helmet again, as it tended to begin after the onset of that heat. They weren't footsteps at least, he knew that now- nobody was walking in this tight and short tunnel.

"Yes, Lieutenant."

He breathed, but the rasps came out in a jumble with the not-footsteps, cluttering the hollow echoes within his helm, fueling the distorting noise. After a while, he even began to hear voices. Machinery too- tearing cloth, scraping metal.

" _Then pull yourself together, I have a feeling it won't be long before they call us in to meet their Captain."_

That voice was real. 'Pull yourself together,' the Lieutenant said. It was an order.

…

How was one supposed to 'pull themselves together'? The Lieutenant wasn't making any sense. The _Captain_ hadn't been making much sense lately either, now that he thought of it.

…

He blinked, and did his best to gain some semblance of his surroundings- without moving of course, and dealing with the narrow field of vision he was given.

They were inside a tunnel, he knew that. Tunnels were dark, tunnels like the ones they filed through underneath Ghirlandaio, but this one was dimly lit by a lamp hanging from one of the wooden support beams holding up the dirt over their helmets. So it wasn't viewed through a red filter at least.

The lights cast a bleary glaze over everything. It was warm, a soft orange glow gently muffling the tightly-packed dirt walls around them. Muffling him. It strained his eyes to even think on it much longer.

He couldn't see everyone in the squad, only the Sergeant in front of him, but he knew they were all there. The Captain in front, followed by the Lieutenant, then the Sergeant, a chain of command leading him on.

And then beyond that, a door. Behind the door, militiamen, _their_ Captain, the man who led them out of the trenches, Wulfstan, and some other voices.

Voices which, not soon after he tried to focus in on them, abruptly fell silent- and then he was left waiting again. It was like time slowing to a crawl, like waiting for orders. But he wasn't waiting for orders, because the Lieutenant had already gave him one and the Corporal hadn't yet carried it out… or maybe he did. He wasn't sure.

What he was sure of though, was that he was waiting for that door to open. There was another Captain inside there- perhaps they would be the one to give the next order. Perhaps they would make more sense right now.

There was a _click,_ and then a creak, and then Wulfstan's voice, calling them in. He breathed once, inhaled, exhaled, and then again- two breaths, before the Sergeant started marching forwards. He followed.

He heard another's voice, a woman's voice, not too unlike Wulfstan's in some regards, the clarity perhaps. There was a firmness to it that Wulfstan's lacked. A numbing coldness it seemed to instill, bringing about some semblance of… half-comfort- if such a thing existed. Like ice on a wound. The throbbing in his shoulder, he didn't feel it anymore, he realized.

"You can hold your men at ease now. Line up in front of the doorway, but keep your hands where we can see them."

He glanced about, watching his squad respond to the seeming _flurry_ of orders in the muddling haze of lamplight; they let their arms fall to their sides almost immediately. It took another few moments before the Corporal registered that, and he mimicked the action best as he could.

There was some strict nuance to _how_ he was supposed to do so that he seemed to recall. He couldn't quite remember what it was, but it was at least something which felt _clear_ at the moment. He had to hold his arms firm as he let them fall downwards, not just let them limply flop to his side. Despite the strange, sudden urge to do just that.

 _line up_

His squad was dispersing from the single-file column they'd formed themselves in. The Captain, identifiable by the longcoat under his armor, remained in the middle, while the Lieutenant, the radio on his back still sporting a few punctures shuffled into place to his right, and the Sergeant to his left.

The Corporal found himself leaning to the left without much thought, sliding into place next to the Sergeant. Felt about right. Left.

The flare of light that greeted his eyes as he stepped out from the dim confines of the doorway seemed to jab at his lenses. It was a harsh, unexpected glare. Blinding, even. He hadn't noticed how bright it was beyond the doorway.

He blinked.

There was a simple, blocky table set down in front of the Corporal and the rest of his squad, with a large sheet- a map, paper map, from the look of the pins stuck through it. Some of the fading black lines were obscured by small clutterings of neatly filed papers sitting overtop of them. And…

His rifle. He saw the scope lens before the rest of it, before he saw the Captain and Lieutenant's own rifles, the Sergeant's machine gun, the glaring light shining down over the table glancing off of it and catching his eye.

It wasn't long before he felt a weightless tingling pricking at his fingers.

"Gentlemen," the voice came back- his red lensed gaze snapped up to the source of it, a figure that stood directly behind the table. She too, wore a longcoat, dark and faded blue, a cap of matching color sitting over a neatly straightened patch of black hair. Even her eyes were somewhat more familiar, glass lens.

She began speaking.

"I'm Captain Varrot, commanding officer of the Gallian Militia's 3rd Regiment and currently overseeing our operations here in Kloden. You've already met Lieutenant Gunther and Sergeant Potter, from Squad 7," she said, gesturing at the two figures to her left. No, his left. Her right.

The Corporal gave them both a glance, still slightly unsure of who was who- he'd only heard their voices before, of course.

It was oddly difficult to make out their features. The more he tried to focus, the more blurry his vision seemed to get. The light wasn't helping either. One of them was smaller, and standing, the other larger, sitting.

The smaller one seemed more fitting for Gunther's voice.

"This is Lieutenant Landzaat, leader of Squad 1," the Captain- Varrot- continued, gesturing to her left at the man who'd led them into the tunnels. Was hard to see the man's face, but he at least could recognize that much. The shade of his hair was easy to spot.

"And Corporal Gunther, currently our most qualified engineering specialist."

To the right- no, _left_ of Landzaat. Another Gunther. A woman- girl, maybe more fitting word to use? She seemed small, at least.

"Lieutenant Gunther was under the impression that the four of you could prove to be an asset to our cause. Sergeant Potter and Lieutenant Landzaat are understandably more skeptical of the notion, as am I."

She paused there, momentarily, but didn't seem to be expecting a response- at the very least, the Captain didn't give her one. The Corporal saw her head pivot as she scanned over the assembled squad, glass eyes lingering on no particular individual for long. How long, he still couldn't tell. By the time she'd come to face him, with a slight flare of light glancing off her eyes (not unlike his scope), she'd resumed speaking.

"The truth is, however, we are in need of as much as help as we can get. We've done well so far against the Imperial forces in this area, but it's taking a toll on our soldiers, and with the weather forecast calling for a resumption of the heavy rains sweeping across the majority of the province, it's doubtful that the core part of our reinforcements from the Regular Army will get here soon. So," she breathed- blowing out a sharp exhale of air. A sigh.

He felt his fingers tensing, suddenly grasping for weapons which weren't there- but _so close_. In sight.

 _don't draw any more attention to yourself than you already have_

"Perhaps we can work out a deal. But we have a good number of concerns that need to be addressed before we can consider that in detail. Are those terms agreeable to you?"

Yes? No? He didn't know how to answer that. Command never gave any direction with regards to _talking_ to anyone, and the immediate chain of command-

 _Let the Captain do the talking_

-right. Right.

The Varrot-Captain wasn't even looking in his direction anyways. That was usually an indication that a question wasn't for him to answer.

"Yes," the Captain- his Captain- the one who'd… saved him- replied.

"Then let's start with the basics."

He noticed that Landzaat had a book in his one hand (Right? Left? Didn't seem important now to spend the time figuring out), smooth blue surface resting against his gloved fingers. He had a pencil in the other, poised over the open book.

"You told Lieutenant Gunther that you're mercenaries, who were under the employ of the Imperial Army for a contract to escort a Ragnite Gas canister. You were unaware of the… sensitive nature of the cargo-" she said with some sense of disdain, creeping into her voice.

"-you were tasked with protecting, and unintentionally discovered that at some point in your contract. When and how did this occur?"

There was a pause, and time seemed to slow to a crawl, even as he heard and saw Landzaat's pencil skittering over paper.

One second.

His Captain would need time to digest the information.

Two seconds.

The Corporal's breathing sounded incredibly _loud,_ echoing in his own helmet, he realized. Was another one of those things he'd never noticed before, he supposed. He tried to make it quieter, bring it under control, lest it was something everyone else could actually hear as well.

So he started counting his breaths. It helped, somewhat, at least made it sound quieter to himself when he could hear a number attached to each inhale and exhale.

One breath.

"We stopped briefly in an Imperial occupied town, close to the border of Gallia. The junior officer heading the Imperial portion of the protection detail stopped to talk with another officer from the local garrison, and let the info about our cargo slip by accident. We overheard it. The garrison itself was small enough that we were ordered to wipe them all out, to cover our tracks."

"Do you remember the name of the town you passed through?"

 _name_

One breath.

He didn't… remember the name himself. They'd mentioned it while travelling, and he remembered seeing a street sign somewhere close to the town, but he didn't remember the name. Command had never told him, so maybe it wasn't important anyways.

Two breaths.

The 'cuckoo's nest'? No. That was just the coded designation for where they were to meet their contact inside the town.

"Bruhl."

He caught a glint of light, to his right. Lieutenant Gunther's eyes had widened somewhat. His figure had leaned forward somewhat too, into the light; maybe that explained why it was easier to see him now.

The Corporal tensed, could feel pressure mounting his chest. Was Wulfstan still watching him? He almost ended up craning his neck around to check, but the Lieutenant's words resonated in his helmet and firmly stopped him from doing so.

 _don't draw any more attention to yourself than you already have_

Was hard to tell if the Lieutenant had actually spoken that over the radio or not too.

One breath. Two breaths. Three- how many had he missed?

 _Just start over_

One breath.

The… scritchety-scratch, of pencil on paper sounded awfully familiar now. A little lighter in sound, but there was some… rhythm of it. Mechanical, almost.

…

No, he had used a pencil before, hadn't he? They always told him to hold it with the right hand, but he always used the left. That was a long time ago though. How long, he didn't know.

…

Two breaths. Three.

 _Focus! Hands steady, one on the cloth, one on the lever- try to keep up!_

 _Pull yourself together_

Four breaths. Five. Six-

 _You're overcompensating! Start over!_

 _A fist slammed down on the smudged wooden surface of the table before him_

One breath.

"And then they attempted to wipe you and your men out as well."

One brea-

"That's affirmative."

 _Faster! If you can't keep up with the cloth as it runs through it's going to get caught and tear!_

One. Two. Three-

 _Start over!_

One.

"Have you taken contracts with the Imperial Army before?"

One breath.

His eyes were trailing over to Corporal Gunther, the cloth draped over her shoulders, the frayed edges and… dangling strings. Torn cloth. Like the Sergeant's machine gun?

Two breaths.

The sound _was_ oddly reminiscent of tearing cloth, yes. At a distance, especially so.

Three breaths.

She didn't look anything like the Lieutenant. Lieutenant Gunther. But they shared the same name?

Four.

"Yes, we have. Under different officers and divisions, and never in Gallia."

"Then where?"

One breath.

He tried to recall the names of other places he'd been deployed to- actually couldn't remember them either. He couldn't even remember the names of the targets he was supposed to shoot.

Two breaths.

"Fhirald."

"Just Fhirald?"

"Yes."

One breath.

There was a crinkling of paper, a queerly familiar sound of soaked and re-dried fibres creaking and cracking- and then the pencil-scratching resumed.

Two breaths.

"Why were you operating so extensively in Fhirald?"

One breath.

Fhirald- yes, he might've heard that name before. Maybe. Made him wonder where the Captain had heard of it.

Two breaths.

 _He_ didn't remember the significance of the name though, for certain. Gallia was probably the one place he could recall being in for so long, for more than a week. At least, he thought it was more than a week. Certainly felt that way.

Three breaths.

He wondered if he would even remember _its_ name when this was all over.

"It was our first real contract, more of a long series of them throughout the Imperial invasion. It paid well and consistently. We didn't see any reason not to tag along."

One breath, two breaths.

 _He overcompensated. Again. The cloth came out mangled, deformed._

One breath.

Sergeant Potter- it turned out the Corporal was right to associated his voice with the large, sitting figure- scoffed.

"So you were out here prepared to do the same thing all over again, huh?"

"Sergeant…"

A sigh. One breath.

"Apologies, ma'am."

Another voice spoke up, one he hadn't heard before. It spoke softly, but clearly enough to be heard over the still-scribbling pencil underneath it. What was his name again?

…

Landzaat. Lieutenant Landzaat.

"Why did the Imperial Army keep you around for so long? From what I heard they had the whole invasion covered on their own. Didn't sound like they needed much help."

…

Maybe he hadn't heard of Fhirald after all then.

One breath.

"It was a short campaign, but that didn't mean it was easy. Imperial general leading the thing liked to push the men forward hard, and some of the officers on the ground weren't so keen on seeing their own men die by the dozens. So they took on a few extra bodies to die in their place."

"And you didn't mind that?"

One breath.

"Pardon me, Lieutenant, I don't quite understand what you're asking."

"You make it sound as though you were being used as nothing more than expendable assets. That didn't bother you in the slightest?"

One breath.

…

'Expendable assets'. He'd heard that before. About him, about all of them.

Two breaths.

Somebody… that had been close to him. Beside him, to be specific. Lying down next to him.

Three breaths.

On rubble. Gazing off into the distance with a pair of magnifying lenses in their hands- binoculars.

…

The Captain- Varrot, had turned to glance at Lieutenant Landzaat now. One of her eyebrows seemed to peak over her glass lens eyes.

Three breaths. No, four. Five.

Damn it.

"No. They paid us to do a job, and we did it."

Spotter. That had been his name. He'd called the Corporal an expendable asset before as well.

…

Maybe the Captain wasn't lying about everything after all.

' _Somebody had to.'_

…

How many breaths was he at again?

 _Start over._

Right. One.

…

Two.

Landzaat had stopped speaking, resumed writing. When the next voice spoke up on the other side of the table, it was Varrot's again.

"So it would be accurate to say that you owe no allegiance to the Empire?"

"Yes."

Even so, that was about the only certainty he'd heard the Captain say.

One, Two breaths.

The pencil-scratching stopped. The Captain- Captain Varrot- and Sergeant Potter shared a look, as did Corporal Gunther and Lieutenant Gunther.

Three breaths.

It was feeling oddly fitting to do the same with one of his squadmates. But they all stood ramrod straight, facing directly forwards, never moving from their queer stillness. It was as though none of them were actually there, the Sergeant and Lieutenant at least, having said nothing at all themselves.

Four breaths.

…so where did that leave himself?

Five breaths.

"And you're clearly… effective in combat, too. Corporal Wulfstan noted that you'd managed to destroy a large portion of the Imperial force tasked with killing you before Squad 7 arrived, correct?"

"That's correct."

 _Focus!_

One breath.

"But you're also experienced with operating in tangent with another, larger force?"

No. It was always four-man operation teams at most, he remembered learning that somewhere, having it drilled into him. Easier to stay mobile, easier to remain hidden.

"Yes."

One.

He dared to turn his head this time, glance over at his squad. None of them even acknowledged the gesture- he wondered if any of them noticed at all.

Two.

Still silent, all quiet on both sides.

Three.

So was it over then?

Four.

He hoped… he never thought about what he hoped. What he wanted.

Five.

Now was a good a time as any to do so, maybe. That was what mercenaries did, wasn't it? Either way, his 'chain of command' wasn't giving much in the way of direction at the immediate moment.

Six.

...

He wanted his rifle back. That was a start, at least.

Seven.

He heard another turn of crinkled pages.

"Tell us more about your equipment."


	17. 17

**I hope I don't regret posting this as is in a couple hours :S**

 **Boy, that sure took a while didn't it?**

 **0-0-0**

"I'll take first watch," she called out, untangling her hair from the dirt she'd been lying in and trying to stir some sort of liveliness into her limbs. The coldness that seemed to rise from the ground made it harder to sleep than ever. They at least still had roofs over their heads back in Vasel.

She didn't get a response.

She tried to ignore the chill caking her skin underneath the mottled fabric of her uniform, tried to still the quivers racing through her bones as she roused herself from numbing stillness.

She squinted her eyes in the dark, tried to blink away the charcoal blurs that seemed to cling to her eyelids, like black patches stitched over-

"Hello?"

It was dark already. Why hadn't somebody come over to their foxhole for night patrol yet? It must've been… damn. Late enough that she couldn't see the little needle-hands on her wristwatch for sure.

She reached for her rifle. Her gloves pawed against mud, brushing into a loose tangle of roots and sending a cascade of slick pebble-shrapnel down into her hair. They tickled at her eyelids.

"Damn it," she hissed, feeling the rumble rip at her dry throat, and split the skies above.

She exhaled, a cold and coppery twang touching upon on her tongue as her lips parted. Artillery thundered high above, and a fresh few drops of blood from the ensuing carnage snaked down onto the exposed nape of her neck.

"Audrey?" She whispered hoarsely, barely even managing that much with the soaking cold that gripped her. A soft pitter-patter crept down her skin, and for a moment, she could hear the cascading rush of men and metal folding under the waves of the Vasel river again.

There was a flash, bright enough to rip through the tangle of Kloden. There were no alarms in the camp, no attempts at return fire.

Audrey stared back at her from the other side of the foxhole, eyes wide open, dull green on blank white lenses. Streaks of water ran down her stiff and pallid face, warping, distorting.

She was dead. Everyone was dead. She was the only one left.

"Damn. You look like a mess," Audrey drawled.

What?

"Hey! Ladies! You got any ponchos down in there?"

Another drop of rain splashed down on her neck, this one jolting her head up into the steadily strengthening mist of water filtering through the trees overhead.

"Whoa, easy. I wake you from your beauty sleep, or are you just happy to see me?"

"We're more than happy to see you Ted. Thanks for the ponchos," said Audrey with a chuckle.

Ramona blinked. She opened her eyes, vision crisp in the frigid night air, looking past Ted's shit-eating grin and up into the canopy.

It really was raining again.

Son of a bitch.

 **0-0-0**

The sudden _snap_ of something- something leather… like a whip, maybe. Brought the Corporal back to attention.

Book. It was just a book snapping shut.

Landzaat's book, notebook.

"Well. You sure know how to pick 'em, Welkin."

Landzaat's remark fell flat, leaving the room in a thick and hazy silence that seemed to have been returning all too often in the last… minutes.

Landzaat tucked his book neatly away at his side, shuffling forwards into the lamplit patch of earth between them and the table. He walked with a strange gait, held himself loosely as he boldly stepped in front of his own Captain- Captain Varrot.

He stopped in front of the Corporal. He looked at him for a moment- two slow, subdued breaths passing between them- and cracked a grin. A smile full of straight-edged teeth, almost much too wide for the- delicate, doll-like features of his face. Like a line of twine stitched into porcelain.

"You've been quiet over there. Not asleep under that mask are you?"

The Corporal blinked. The smile he saw on Landzaat was gone as quick as he'd seen it appear.

An eyebrow raised in the continuing silence, and the Corporal scrambled to sift out the jumble of words that had seemed to be directed at him. He heard buzzing in his earpiece, the faint resonance of static and somebody's voice under it- could've been the Lieutenant, could've been the Captain for all he knew. He couldn't hear it by the time he'd spoken up.

"No."

The voices ringing in his head stopped, and he suddenly felt his body tense up again with the sharp silence that fell over the room. He took note of all the eyes on him. Even his squad was looking at him now, little red buttons glaring at him blankly. All of their eyes were blank. Glassy, blues and browns devoid of color.

They snapped their gazes away as quickly as they'd focused on him.

"And you are their… marksman? Sniper? Sharpshooter?"

…

"Yes."

A smile twitched over Landzaat's lips, lopsided. He didn't show any teeth this time. The man looked as though he was going to speak again, but the Captain's voice cut in first.

"He typically fills in for our lack of a designated specialist in each of those fields. Good with precision work in general, though he can handle himself well enough in an assault role too."

"Because of the armor."

"Yes."

"Corporal Wulfstan's report seemed to indicate otherwise. Jumped by an Imperial shocktrooper when he was trying to quit the field, no?"

Landzaat's eyes shifted to the side, seeming to look past the Corporal at something else. His gaze lingered long enough this time that it remained after the Corporal blinked. Someone. He was looking at someone else.

Wulfstan. He'd almost forgotten she was even in the room at all.

"Affirmative. It was right after a stray lancer round from Private Heitinga flushed him out from his position."

"And you know the rest," said the Captain. "We've gone over this already."

"We have indeed," said Varrot with a sigh before slumping down behind the table. "We've gone over a lot of things already."

She straightened her back, lenses flashing in the light briefly as she glanced up at them. Her lips tightened into a flat line, a thin thread stretched taut on her face. She made a strange gesture with her gloved hands, her hand limply making some uncoordinated motion in the air, flopping as though moving under the clumsy direction of a child. Maybe it was just a trick of the light.

He blinked , and noticed Landzaat had snapped back to attention, briskly walking over to Varrot's desk. There was another snap of leather as the Gallian-Lieutenant dropped his notebook in front of the Gallian-Captain, leaving the latter to gently ease it open and stare listlessly at the pages.

…

…

…

One breath.

He felt himself lapsing out of attention already, his sight growing blurry with orange in the hazy, tangled mess of the lamplight.

And then a voice cropped up that hadn't been very prominent in the room. At least one that hadn't been when he was paying attention. It came from the corner, over from where the other Gallian Lieutenant, that… Gunther, was standing. It was his voice too, still somehow recognizable without the crackle of radio static over it.

"Captain, with all due respect, I think we've gone over all we could at this point."

The Corporal found himself straightening up just a little bit at that. The glint of his rifle's scope, lying on Varrot's desk, seemed to sharpen things a little, even.

"I think we should take them in."

Yet even more silence followed. Varrot didn't even bother to glance up from her desk.

…

Potter's voice came from the same corner.

"C'mon Elle. Don't make this into a vote."

"I'm afraid we're already at that point. And your vote's the one we're waiting on."

"Tch. Yeah. What would you do without me?"

Nobody spoke, but there was a sudden creak of wood as a lumbering mass rose from the shadowy corner over by Gunther and Potter. The Corporal's fingers twitched.

Two breaths.

He laid eyes on Sergeant Potter in the light, for the first time. The man was… large. As he already knew. He blinked, as though that would clear away the strands of orange floating around the dusty blue uniform clinging to Potter's enormous frame. It didn't.

He craned his neck up as the Gallian-Sergeant approached, _him,_ directly. He felt tiny in the man's shadow. His chest strained with the pressure of fingers suddenly grasping for his neck. Crazed eyes stared down at him, bloodshot, from behind blood-caked metal.

The fingers retracted as quickly as they'd shot out.

"You got a name?"

Potter's features looked strangely soft, up close. Peculiar tufts of hair clung to a rounded, fleshy jaw.

The Captain attempted to cut in.

"His-"

"Quiet. I'm askin' him."

A synchronized shuffle of movement in the room swept away the haze lingering over his vision, his blank red gaze sharpening, his mask's teeth bracing themselves. This time, he could feel their eyes on him for the entire duration of a breath.

 _Let the Captain do the talking._

Two breaths. He was still breathing. There were no fingers around his neck.

"Friedrich."

The Corporal tensed as Sergeant Potter stared him down for a moment longer, and then strode over to the Sergeant next to him.

"You?"

…

"Erich."

One breath, and Potter moved past the Sergeant, the heavy footfalls of his boots leaving gentle thumps on the ground.

"Alright chatterbox, your turn."

…

"Walther," replied the Captain. Two breaths.

"Alright, last one. You bunch sure have some pretty boring names. Better be a good one," said Potter with a chuckle.

The Corporal couldn't tell if that was a good or bad thing.

…

Three breaths.

Four.

He supposed he _had_ just disobeyed orders.

Five.

"Michaela."

A whole four breaths of silence passed before the Lieutenant broke it again. "It's not that uncommon of a name for men in Fhirald."

"Must be a new trend," said Landzaat. "Friedrich, Erich, Walther, and Michaela. No last names?"

Corporal Gunther, however silent as she'd been so far, seemed to be gazing at the four of them more intently all of a sudden.

"None that we're willing to disclose, no," replied the Captain. "First names were dangerous enough."

The Corporal remained bolt upright as Potter paced in front of them, those thudding footsteps drumming on his chestplate in quick, one-two intervals. He could still hear them even as the Gallian-Sergeant came to a halt, a mere four or five feet away from him.

A heavy sigh filled the room, the hefty breath seeming to flood the Corporal's vision with haze again on its own. "If the boss thinks it's a good idea, I don't think I'm gonna try to talk him outta it. It's not like we could really do anything else with 'em anyway."

Landzaat hummed out a strange, one-note tune that the Corporal couldn't quite understand.

"Something else you'd like to add, Lieutenant?" Asked Varrot.

"No ma'am. It sounds like you have your vote."

She snapped the book on her desk closed, and removed the lenses from her eyes. "I suppose I do."

 **0-0-0**

"You look pretty cold over there on your own. Sure you'd rather not share? All the boys are doing it." Audrey almost sounded pretty happy about the rain. Great big smile plastered all over her face even as streaks ran down her skin, past her poncho. Was almost like she'd just forgotten her little bout of asshurt earlier in the day.

"I'll be fine. Haven't had a good shower for a while anyway," Ramona replied with her best attempt at a deadpan between her chattering teeth.

"A good shower usually doesn't involve cowering under a poncho, y'know." That tone of voice generally didn't mean a good thing. Nor did that glint in the eyes. "Or wearing clothes."

If she was just a wee bit more delusional, she might've thought Audrey was actually trying to get in her pants. She was a little cautious about jumping to that conclusion though, given how her encounter with the esteemed Private Regard had gone earlier.

"Oh, y'know. It's just one of those city girl quirks..."

 **0-0-0**

"I'll be putting you on indefinite assignment to assist Lieutenant Gunther's squad unless otherwise specified," declared Varrot at last. "You will be carrying out a wide variety of high-risk operations alongside the Gallian Militia, and we will pay you consistently on the basis of a regular salary over the course of the war."

 _"I hope you have a quick escape 'plan' in mind,_ Walther," growled the Sergeant over their comms channel, breaking the tender silence that had reigned over it in a burst of static. _"I don't think getting caught up in a full-on war was ever part of our primary directives."_

 _"I concur. This is getting out of hand, Captain."_

Time ground to a halt as the Corporal stood breathlessly, listening for the Captain's response. This time, he dared to break the stillness, craned his neck around to look at the Captain's formless black figure, standing ever so slightly out to the front of them four with his back facing him.

"You will bear no affiliation with us, nor the Gallian Regular Army," continued Varrot. "This detachment's frontline war correspondent will be notified of your presence, and informed that she will not be reporting on your presence, or role in our military operations in… any explicit manner."

 _"So much for leaving no witnesses."_

The Captain did seem to be neglecting that directive to quite some extent lately.

…

He never had considered what would happen if he ever failed an objective before. Were they merely going to forget the canister as well, just like that?

"With regards to your previous mercenary service under the Imperial Army, I will leave it to my officers' discretion to inform their men as they see fit. They may or may not choose to disclose such information for purposes of morale, and you would be wise to keep it to yourselves unless otherwise notified."

What was that supposed to even mean? Did she want them to inform the others or not? Just thinking about it was making the whole room buzz with blaring haze. This Captain Varrot's orders were even less clear than his Captain's at the moment. And he wasn't even speaking.

"As your weapons happen to chamber the same type of round used by our own riflemen, we will be able to keep you steadily supplied with ammunition. You will be responsible for maintaining your own weapons in the field, and we will trust you to hold them while under our supervision."

Those words barely even registered with the Corporal at this point. The sharp edge of his rifle scope couldn't cut through the buzzing filter over his eyes anymore.

"Are these terms agreeable to you?"

 _Yes!_

He felt a sudden surge to simply _say_ it now, get them out of the damnable room and all the swarming _noise._ His orders had never been so… obtuse. Blurry, fuzzy, orange and frazzled.

He coughed. It wheezed out through the filter-teeth of his mask, his _heart, pounding_ in his chest- drumming on his head, thundering on the ground. They'd never been footsteps to begin with.

 _Let the Captain do the talking._

 _Somebody had to._

"Yes."

What he _wanted_ was to go back. Back to the rattling truck with the canister, the rumbling gunship bays with his handler and Spotter, the workshop with all the threads and needles and uniform cloth dolls. The color here was blinding. He almost considered throwing the red filter back over his eyes- at least then there wasn't so _much_ to register.

"Then it's settled. Lieutenant Gunther will escort you outside to your foxholes; Corporal Gunther will be along shortly with your weapons. Corporal Wulfstan will call for you again tomorrow morning, and then-"

The rest of Varrot's orders flew by in a blur. All he could see now was orange light, a blinding spectrum of it, fuzzy and threaded, combed and tangled.

And then they were out, back in the rain.

 **0-0-0**

"Is it just me, or did it get a _lot_ colder all of a sudden?"

No answer. Audrey was already asleep.


	18. 18 Blackout

Ramona really thought she might've been going crazy for a second when she heard Lieutenant Gunther's voice ring out over the din of falling rain; hell, the rain itself, coming down in sheets of noise, almost sounded like radio static in that regard. She strained her ears, trying to discern anything out in the rain; after a few seconds, she heard it again. For sure. And despite how muffled they were, footsteps too, ever so subtly splashing and leaving suction-heavy thuds out in the mud.

She couldn't tell _what_ the hell the LT was saying, but least that was something she was used to; hearing little snippets of it through the radio that only the group leader carried.

It didn't help with the lasting wake of the electric chill that had just run down Ramona's spine. The words that had slipped her tongue echoed in her own ears beneath the heavy poncho draped over her hair. A puff of air escaped her lips, misting into a faint white cloud as soon as it hit the rain.

" _ **Thank you, Lieutenant."**_

She didn't have any problems with hearing _that_ voice. Wasn't anybody from the squad, and despite the faint static filter masking those words, she knew it wasn't just from a clandestine radio conversation being held by the world's worst enemy infiltrator either.

 _Fuck me, are they actually gonna go through with this?_

She cast a second glance over at Audrey, mentally debating whether or not this was worth waking the Lancer over- she settled on probably not. What the hell difference would it make, if their esteemed LT had made his choice already?

There was some shuffling she picked up outside now, the distinct noise of clanking armor despite the notable lack of it earlier. She really didn't need to do so at this point, but instincts were taking over and she ended up managing to shift the bundled-up poncho over her enough to peek out over the top of the foxhole towards the commotion anyway.

It took a few seconds for her bleary eyes to adjust to the mirage-like quality of her surroundings, but even through the pouring rain she could make out their striking black silhouettes settling into a nearby foxhole.

…

She didn't really know what she'd been expecting to come out of this whole matter, now that she thought of it. Maybe that was why she'd chosen not to dwell on it so much in the first place. Private Regard's latest words seemed to be ringing in her head for the whole few seconds she spent with her head out in the rain, her rifle, contrary to his advice, resting comfortably and dryly down in the little cubby hole reserved for weapons to her right.

They didn't say another word as Lieutenant Gunther's unmistakable form- somehow standing upright without so much as an extra layer of cloth to shield him over his regular uniform- lingered a little more in the rain. The outline of his head rolled around casually, as though he were just surveying the environment on any other day- as though the figures filing into the foxhole beneath him with the same mechanical motions didn't just _radiate_ a sense of wrongness from them.

She thought she saw his gaze glance over to where she was dumbly peering out from her foxhole, but he didn't do anything to acknowledge her presence. Why he wouldn't bother, for some grunt he probably couldn't even see properly, she could sure understand- but a little bit of fucking reassurance wouldn't have been unwelcome.

 _What the hell are you doing?_

No, she didn't usually concern herself with matters like this. She never really had much of a reason to, and with the whole anti-Darcsen sentiment apparently still fresh in some people's minds, she _really_ didn't want to add fuel to the inter-squad fire unnecessarily. But she could _not_ have been the only one who could just feel there was something off about them- hell, no, she _knew_ that much. Practically everybody in the whole fucking Squad did from the moment they'd seen these armored nutcases. She'd never pegged the LT for someone being particularly ignorant, maybe a little oblivious with regards to some matters from what she'd seen, but _how the hell did he not see this!?_

The last of the four figures seemed to slip while descending into the foxhole, its motions falling out of sync in a manner that might've been comical if circumstances were any different. They even managed to make that whole ordeal creepy- anyone else and she would've expected a gaggle of deriding laughter, a chuckle, some cursing at the very least. None of that came from their foxhole. No sign of movement, other than that last one catching itself and then proceeding just like the rest had before it.

She slumped back into her own soon after, deciding nothing good would come from just looking on. If she really wanted to get involved, she might as well sneak out and catch the LT alone while he was heading back to his officer's quarters and ask him just what the _fuck_ he was thinking.

Why that was only being juggled around as a hypothetical impossibility to illustrate her lack of input on the matter rather than being considered a valid course of action was anybody's guess at that point. It wouldn't be the first time somebody challenged him, and she wasn't going to be getting any sleep for the rest of the night for sure.

…

…

The pitter-patter of rain smacking down on her poncho hood made that a certainty, if nothing else. She looked over to her rifle, more trying to distract herself with imagining how much more effort it would've really taken to clear out a little more space to nestle herself in there than anything else. It figured that the jackasses writing their field manual were more concerned with keeping their weapons dry than themselves.

 **0-0-0**

" _Leave the ammo and weapons for now, we'll load up when the rain subsides a little."_

" _Yeah. Alright. And then what?"_

" _If there's a point to this continued line of questioning, Sergeant, I'd prefer you get to it now."_

There was a certain edge creeping into the both the Captain and Sergeant's voices that the Corporal hadn't heard before. He wasn't sure why he was just now picking up on it- they all looked the same with their backs against the wall in the foxhole, their weapons left in an unopened bundle of tarp in the middle, their voices floating disembodied on their comm channel.

" _I've been trying to drive the same fucking point for the past seven hours Captain, that being: what do we plan to do now?"_

The latter's voice was booming, on the verge of the screaming and yelling that had weaved in and out of their radio channel when they were faced with the Imperials. Even then, when he could tell their voices were louder, they weren't like this.

" _Captain,"_ began the Lieutenant- more softly than the Sergeant, for certain, but there was a certainly quality to his voice that too sounded off. Like it was shaking, teetering. _"We_ _ **can't**_ _stay here without an immediate plan of action; it was risky enough to even come along in the first place, let alone leave the objective behind."_

The Captain remained silent. The Sergeant took the opportunity to continue, unabated. After seeing them all remain silent for so long it was… jarring, to say the least.

" _Why the hell haven't we even considered secondary evac options yet? Tertiary? We were supposed to be at extraction_ _ **before**_ _the invasion started, not stick around and then take sides in the damn-"_

" _ **Extraction is no longer an option, Sergeant,"**_ said the Captain, his voice rising well above what was needed to be heard over a radio channel. Somehow, that bothered the Corporal more than what he actually said at the moment.

There was a moment of silence, two of the three other armored figures in the foxholesuddenly stirring into motion and fixing the third with an unwavering dull red glare. The Corporal didn't follow in suit- his eyes felt tired. Heavy.

 _He_ was tired.

Maybe it wasn't just him after all. All three voices seemed to lose any sense of… fire to them. Maybe he just couldn't tell because of all the armor, the masks.

" _What… what do you mean? It's only been a day, maybe two since we missed our primary extraction window, if we haul ass to the Southern border-"_

" _We'll be up to our neck in Imperial forces without a single friendly radio signal to catch. Command was clear when they told me: our primary extraction window was our only extraction window. They were planning to clear out all operative teams from the entire continent after this operation, recalling every asset. If anyone's left behind now, they're on their own."_

…

…

" _When did you receive this message? I don't remember it being in the briefing, o-or getting anything on the channel-"_

" _They put me in another briefing right after the first. You weren't privy to that information."_

The reality of what was being said finally began to sink in for the Corporal.

…

"So we're… stuck, here?"

The Captain sighed. _"Yes, Corporal."_

That should've been… alarming, to say the least. He'd never been in this situation before. Never had extraction cut off, let alone even been cut off from Command itself. Yet, somehow, it felt like he'd already been exposed to that revelation a few hours before.

He supposed he had had a feeling that something wasn't quite the same when they'd deployed him for this operation. But this was… this was… not enough to really sink in, incredibly. Dreamlik- was he dreaming again? Perhaps he would wake soon, and just be back in the truck in Barious. Then they would still be behind schedule. And without Command.

He blinked, shook his head. Still yet, none of the other figures moved.

" _Get some rest, all of you. We'll have some time to discuss this later in the morning."_

There was short pause, and the Corporal was almost all too quick to comply- but he remained awake for a few breaths more, expecting something from either the Sergeant, or even the Lieutenant at this point. Only the Captain bothered to follow up his own words.

" _That's an order."_

 **0-0-0**

 **I don't usually like leaving notices around, especially those signalling where I'm going with this story, but I feel like this is a significant enough incident to warrant one**

 **I was fully intending to wrap up the night with this chapter; a bit of reflection after a while made me reconsider, I think there's a certain someone who hasn't quite settled down for the night just yet and deserves a bit of closure before this first little part of the story wraps up. I'm working on it, promise :)**


	19. 19 Weather Forecast

**Should get a swear jar tally for these first 19 chapters in celebration or something, haha. I'll admit that this was… maybe a bit long winded, definitely more than I planned. Kinda just went by the seat of my pants on this one, and usually I don't like how those kinds of chapters turn out.**

 **I'm mostly questioning whether it was appropriate to have this last 'opening wrap-up' come out so off-tune (put it this way, I've been listening to Phantogram and Ghost a lot lately, while before it was a lotta Iron Maiden lol) with everything else so far, but all the rationalizing I've done tells me it at least makes** _ **sense,**_ **given the context.** **And it was fun. Definitely don't wanna just throw it all away… idk, honestly :/**

 **I guess I'll sleep on it, regardless of other comments, if this doesn't come down in a couple days it'll prolly be here to stay. For better or worse.**

 **0-0-0**

The lamplight, dim and bleary as it was, damn near blinded Ramona when she stepped over the waterlogged threshold leading into the so-called 'officer's mess'. What a mess it was indeed, she mused as she- covertly, of course- slipped out of her ever-so-encumbering boots, letting the clumsy bricks rest just under the doorway leading in. Couldn't have somebody see her standard-issue blunderfuck trooper boot tracks run through the uneven tunnels in which the big bad officers resided after all.

A poorly maintained dirt tunnel held up by a buncha wooden beams wouldn't have been what she had in mind when it came to officer's quarters, but the feeling of that arid, coarse-grained earth underneath her naked feet was the most welcome thing she'd felt in a long time.

A smile creased over her lips as she slid her poncho hood down, letting her stifled hair run free at last. She decided to lose the gloves for now too, at the very least for the purposes of bringing some sense of order to the violated mess of orange resting on her scalp without tangling up more moisture in it.

Her heart pounded with such a vile giddiness as her fingers ran through her hair, snatching up bundles of it in familiar motions that simultaneously wrung them free of stagnancy and began the gradual process of winding them up into a nice little lopsided bun sprouting off of her head.

Only having a crooked line of hanging lamps leading down the expanse of the tunnel to look at while doing so didn't faze her in the slightest; she didn't need a mirror for this anymore. Not after that Winter Solstice incident back in '32.

She found her smile widening, despite it all. Oh, she knew full well the hell she could catch from this if she was found out, sneaking around in the top brass' den well past midnight. It sure wouldn't be the same as sneaking out of her parents' house.

Now that she thought of it, some jumpy kid on patrol could mistake her for an enemy infiltrator and _shoot_ her.

…

Fuck it, she'd always wanted to play the part of a sexy super spy as a kid. She guessed this was as close as she'd get.

She bit her lip, forced herself to focus and slam a lid down on the fountain of thoughts bubbling inside her head as her fingers struggled against a particularly nasty knot of hair.

A few seconds passed by as she juggled that arduous task with keeping a careful eye on the tunnel before her for sentries of any sort- if, honestly, they even bothered at this time of night. She was pretty sure she'd gone by at least two empty perimeter patrol routes as it was earlier.

…

Damn. She must've gotten more dirt caught up there than she'd thought.

…

A little under half a minute went by before she managed to wring a fucking _pebble_ out of her hair.

She spitefully cast it aside with a flourish, in the same motion she spent lacing up the last few sprouts of liberated orange between her fingers up into a springy few strands, the final result being a "sophisticated and elegant spin on the wasted party girl look", as Gallian Girl had once so eloquently put it.

 _There. All done._

…

…

All done.

She lingered in her spot for a moment more, the still-thundering heartbeats in her chest clashing with the reality of everything slowly creeping back into consciousness.

…

She drew in a deep breath, blinked away some of the lingering blur over her eyes.

She'd left that life behind now. For better or worse was anyone's guess, honestly. If there was one certainty, it was that she wasn't going to choke to death on her own alcohol-induced vomit out here at least.

She took a tentative few tiptoe steps forward, sizing up the tunnel that lay before her. It went straight for a few paces, but then seemed to veer off a bit to the left. Looked straightforward enough.

Maybe it wouldn't be that hard to find Lieutenant Gunther's office. Assuming, of course, that the Militia at least afforded their officers door nameplates or… something.

 **0-0-0**

 _Okay, maybe it won't be that easy either,_ she thought as she drifted past 'Corporal O'Hara's' door for the third time in…

…she glanced down at her wristwatch, wincing a little at the momentary glint of light off the glass. Ten minutes.

She sighed, the exhaustion of a sleepless night combined with a fruitless search for her squad leader in the seemingly labyrinthine bowels of their officer quarters finally seeming to catch up to her body. It was 3:32AM. If she didn't manage to straight up find a way _out_ she'd probably be caught by the early morning birds at this rate.

She slumped against the wall with a light _thud_ , the firm wood holding her up feeling so very enticing with its embrace.

Maybe she could just take a nap. A post-midnight nap. And then chalk up the whole thing to drunken sleepwalking in the wake of using some ill-gotten alcoholic goods of questionable quality that were liberated back in Vasel, then possibly get off lucky with just a few hours of latrine duty as punishment.

…no, fuck that. As much as at one point she'd wondered if Private Coren really did have a stick up her ass, that wasn't something she was willing to put in the effort to find out.

 _Come on girl. No turning back now._

She glanced up the length of the wall, eyeing the Spartanly assembled nameplate resting just above her head, as though looking to its silver printing for guidance.

At least she'd been right on the whole nameplate thing. Sentry thing too, it seemed like she was the only person walking around at this time of night. She drew in a deep breath, blinked away some dots starting to sprinkle her vision.

If she just hurried up, maybe she could finish this up without any incident.

She heard shuffling behind the wall- door- oh, _oh._ She'd slumped against the door. Corporal O'Hara's door-

-there was the distinct sound of a locking bolt being slid aside, a muffled yawn following up.

-wow, wow, _wow, shit!_

She sprung away from the door, no doubt ten minutes too late to save her ass now- she desperately looked down both sides of the hallway, seeing if there was an alcove to tuck herself into, one of so many side passages she could race out of sight to.

Nope.

The door inevitably swung open, leaving her caught in the open, like a fumbling scout in a sniper's crosshairs.

She felt pretty damn awake again when she came face-to-face with Corporal O'Hara, who, for having presumably just been woken up from a decent night's sleep looked pretty well-kempt. Aside from some unbuttoned… erm, buttons on her uniform, a stray lock of dark brown hair dangling in front teal eyes, she looked pretty damn ready to kill some Imps. Or whatever it was a Corporal actually did.

 _Wulfstan's a Corporal._

Ah. Right.

That definitely didn't help.

"Can I help you with something?"

Maybe it was the light playing tricks on her, but she certainly didn't sound all that pissed off at all. There was actually a rather soothing tone to her voice, even, not at all fitting the flat line pressed over her lips.

"I'm, uh… looking for Lieutenant Gunther's quarters, actually. Haven't had any luck. I was… hoping if you could help?"

She'd been expecting a whole range of unfavorable responses, anything from a 'did you forget something, maggot?' befitting an officer talking down to a lowly Private to having the door slammed in her face- also on account of her being a lowly Private-

-definitely not a laugh. Certainly not one that was tactfully soft as to not wake any of the other residents in the Mole-tel.

.

.

Fuck her, she really needed to stop indulging Ted so much in his jokes.

"This is just the Junior Officers' quarters hon, Lieutenant Gunther's are down in the West Wing."

 _Don't call me 'hon'-_

"Oh. Uh… thanks," responded Ramona, her flapping tongue somehow managing to stave off paralyzed hesitation.

 _Officer on deck!_

"Mo- Ma'am," she corrected herself.

"No problem," said O'Hara with another chuckle.

The door swiveled back closed with a quiet _click_ , leaving Ramona out in the hallway with her heart feeling like it was a few paces away from leaping into her throat.

Frankly, it felt fucking amazing. A free ticket to the Lieutenant's door, no questions asked. She guessed she still had that silver tongue.

 **0-0-0**

Somehow, she'd managed to find her way towards 'West'. At least the layout here seemed a lot less obtuse compared to the mazelike expanse of the apparent Junior Officer quarters- far as she could see, it was just one straight hallway carved into the earth.

Then again, the entrance had given her the same impression, and she'd officially been sneaking around for nearly 20 minutes now.

She knelt down closer to the floor as she closed in on the next door- whatever good that would do. She guessed, if it didn't actually make her harder to see, it made her _feel_ like she would be harder to see, thus boosting her confidence… or, something. Either way, the door was still ajar, with a particularly intense light beaming out from the open crack.

 _Fingers crossed._

She began to make out a certain noise, as she crept closer- a distinct, scratching noise, almost mechanical in its rhythm.

Sewing machine? She blinked, trying to figure where that'd come from-

Pencil on paper. Fucking hell, she'd remember that from anywhere.

Somebody was still awake.

She paused at the edge of the light beam, both trying to see if she could manage to spare a peek inside to have a look at who it was, or peek around and make out whose nameplate was attached to the door. She squinted, the strain on her eyelids threatening to black out her vision at this point.

Angle wasn't good on either. The best she could make out inside was a table leg, or some _body's_ leg, she couldn't tell even that much. The nameplate looked just out of reach too, the steel grey trim on it just glinting in the dim lamplight out where she was.

She blinked, shook her head as though to refresh her vision.

 _Time for a door breach?_

 _Ha-ha._

Maybe if she really _did_ wanna get shot.

Jokes aside, she really didn't see any way she could go about this without being spotted by whoever was inside. The shadow her passing body would probably leave behind would… probably alert the person inside. That was how light worked, right?

Wait, was it? The light was shining from the inside, she was passing on the outside…

She wracked her sleep-deprived, adrenaline-hopped brain for a few seconds, trying to rationalize and figure it out- what if she could find a way to shoot out the lights? Find a glass bottle and break it against the far wall as a distraction, then sneak past when the guy came out to investigate-

-right, and where would she get a glass bottle from anyhow? Wasn't like they would just have those lying around in an officer's quarters.

…

This was just dumb. She was so. Damn. Tired.

She sighed, and leaned back against the wall.

…

She sure didn't feel like a super spy now. Her feet felt coarse, the patches of skin that weren't caked over with a thin film of dust feeling definitely roughened up for the worse.

…

What the hell had she been thinking?

It felt like whatever fire had been pumping in her veins ever since she slipped out of that foxhole just dissipated- felt just like coming down from a high, but without the reassurance that she'd have the droning monotony of a schoolday to walk it off before going out to do it all over again.

So she'd made it here, was- temporarily obstructed by a goddamn open doorway. She could find a way past it, yes, no problem. She'd been through worse. Even then, it might've actually been Lieutenant Gunther in there for all she knew.

But then _what?_

Where to start, what her _plan_ even was when she went in there- fuck it, what about her boots? Those weren't just going to lie there all morning if she didn't go back soon before the _actual routine early morning patrols_ got up. What about Audrey, sitting back in their foxhole all on her own, she wasn't gonna be asleep the whole time either-

-hell, if she'd been _thinking,_ maybe she woulda waited _until_ the morning, when the LT usually _actually_ was around, in the _open._

But no, she hadn't been thinking.

She never really did, she guessed. How else would she have ended up in the Militia?

" _Fuck",_ she whispered.

The pencil-scratching from beyond the door stopped.

She closed her eyes, figuring for sure she'd been heard. Caught after all this tip-toeing around, all over a stupid ass little cuss word.

There was a scraping of wood against dirt, a horrid sound that might've rivaled the screech of chalk on slate in her memory if she wasn't so full of herself at the moment.

Maybe she was just making a bigger deal out of the whole thing than it was- Corporal O'Hara didn't give a shit for sure, and honestly, nobody in their command really seemed like they would either. _Maybe_ Varrot, if only cuz she never seemed to fucking smile- and was their Captain-

-maybe she kinda wished it was a bigger deal than it was. Like she was… actually doing something for once. That's what she sure _thought_ joining up would mean. Better than community service, expulsion, or whatever petty punishment they would've kept doling out for her so she could keep fucking around.

Everyone had known her time in the spotlight would be done for as soon she'd set foot in there. Didn't think, never did.

Footsteps, the crisp _click, clack_ of an officer's jackboots closing on the door.

 _Fuck it. Fuck them. I'm here now._

She rose up to her full height as the door creaked open, a bleary-eyed Lieutenant Gunther looking around curiously before seeming to actually catch her gaze.

"Oh… um…" He sounded about as tongue-tied as she imagined she herself must've been when she'd bumped into O'Hara. It was funny how things like this worked out.

"Hey, Lieutenant," she muttered, snapping off a half-hearted salute.

He just stood there for a few seconds, full uniform still on and everything. He really didn't look all that much worse for the wear, all-nighters or no. Maybe university'd conditioned him like that. Or maybe he was just some sort of superhuman mascot bred by the royal ministry to boost morale on the frontlines.

"Private… Linton, was it?"

"Guilty as charged."

She must've sounded awfully cheery saying that, cuz despite all things he gave ended up giving her a smile that might've come off as uncanny, or just plain _creepy_ if it'd been anyone else. She recognized it as something akin to him communicating 'haha, good joke, but I'm unfortunately not too well-versed in the social side of interpersonal relationships to know how to verbally respond'. It wasn't so much of a bad thing, once she'd gotten used to it honestly- not that she spoke to him much anyway. Was just kinda from, second-hand observation she guessed.

She cleared her throat. Took a quick moment to try and gather her thoughts, now that she was _here,_ despite everything-

"Lieutenant, can we talk? I'm… a little concerned about some recent developments is all…"

Well, that was easy enough to say.

She felt herself relaxing a little already, all the more so when he nodded, seemingly in understanding, and ushered her inside.

"You can come on inside if you like, have a seat. I was just finishing up with some paperwork as it was."

"Thank you, sir."

 **0-0-0**

There was already a chair he had set up, directly across from his side of the desk. It hadn't been pushed against the desk yet, and the wooden surface feeling quite warm when she eased herself into it too. Seemed like she wasn't the first guest the Lieutenant was entertaining tonight.

"You'll have to excuse the mess, I promised Faldio I'd do up some of his reports after… erm… a, ah, meeting ran a bit longer than expected."

"Faldio?" She asked- not really thinking yet again, but with how things had been going that night anyway, she doubted it mattered anyhow.

"Ah, excuse me, Lieutenant Landzaat," said Lieutenant Gunther slid into his chair opposite of her, clearing aside a few papers drifting a bit closer to her side. She smiled a bit. Guessed there was some info she wasn't supposed to see.

"Hmm. So that's how it is? First name basis with everyone but not your lowly subordinates?" Fuck her, she really should've kept that one in check. She saw a pink dusting visibly flare up on the Lieutenant's cheeks- oh, so maybe he wasn't _that_ clueless after all.

"Well, to be honest Linton, I don't actually have your file on record. About half the Squad kind of got attached right before we headed out for Vasel."

Oh, she remembered that much for sure. Worst vehicle ride of her life- up until that point she guessed. She'd never imagined things could be worse than Randgriz public transit.

"Ramona."

"Ah. I'll, be sure to remember that," he said while trying to smile at about the same time. It didn't work for him so well.

They lapsed into a short moment of silence, as he filed out the small stack of papers in his hand and started away again with his pencil.

Her move, then.

She took the time to survey his desk a little, figured she might as well, given the opportunity- jokes aside, he didn't make that much of an effort to actually conceal any of the potentially sensitive paperwork lying around. It all looked like gibberish to her anyways- maybe because it was upside down from her angle.

One thing did catch her eye, though. Even though it was just a harmless sketch, a fairly rough one at that- scribbly lines everywhere, scritch-scratches lining the surface- its form, the blank white eyes embedded in the creature's mask were enough to send a light chill down her spine.

"Interesting drawing," she noted with a slight tilt of her head.

Lieutenant Gunther paused, nodded again as he ran a gloved hand through the side of his hair. "Intimidating, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I don't suppose that's what you came here to ask me about," he said somewhat flatly- more as a statement than a question- as he reached over to his sketchbook, pulled it over towards him. Ramona couldn't say she was sad to see the image disappear from her sight.

"Not so much the drawing as much as the subject of it," she said, still with a sly undertone worming its way into her voice.

"Mm."

She stared intensely at him, watching him for any sign while he seemed to just study the page beneath him just as intensely. Anyone else, and she would've imagined they were just trying to avoid her gaze, and any further line of conversation. Gunther though, she wouldn't be surprised if he was _actually_ trying to find some meaning in the sketch.

So she waited, figuring she'd give him his chance to give the whole sales pitch- she imagined anything she had to say, he'd probably heard a good deal of by now anyhow.

He turned the page once, and she ended up catching a glimpse of its contents in the light. More drawings, of _them-_ thickly coated, thickly armored silhouettes, a whole crop of them smattering the page. Some in motion, some standing. There wasn't much difference between the two, actually.

He seemed to notice her attention on the pictures as well, and eased the book out a little- despite the mounting discomfort she felt just seeing them, she didn't turn it away.

It wasn't long before he flipped a page again, this one again focusing in on a mask. _That_ one she'd seen before. Smiley, the one underneath the Imp corpse.

He must've picked up on her discomfort or something, or just had finished showing her all he'd intended- he eased the book closed, set it aside.

"Ramona, have you heard of that story, with the Girl and the Snake?"

Oh. Of course he'd find a way to bring nature into this, she shoulda figured. She'd heard some variations on it, sure- most involved some liberal interpretation of what a 'snake' could be-

She chuckled though, decided to humour him. "Let's pretend I haven't."

He smiled. "That's good. Most people who have tend to go in with, a certain skewed perception of how this one goes."

She raised an eyebrow, but let him continue. He had her attention for sure, though she wasn't really sure how much good it'd do.

"There was a young girl walking along the Plains of Naggiar, deep in the throes of Winter, when the dirt and grass had long frozen over. A feeble rustling noise beneath her feet drew her attention downwards- below her laid a fine specimen of a Naggiar Death Rattler, its name earned from both the distinct noise its tail gives off to warn trespassers on its territory, and the terrible spasms its venom inflicts on victims."

Yup. Definitely helping.

"This one's burrow had been destroyed by Imperial shellfire, and it now laid in the harsh Winter wastes, freezing, starving, helpless."

Well, that… was actually a spin on it that she hadn't been expecting. Ramona nodded when he paused there, signalled him to continue.

"The snake spoke to the young girl, pleading for her to take it into her coat, where it was warm. The girl refused. Why would she do such a thing? She knew of such creatures and the danger they posed- it was, after all, in their nature to hunt and kill. She could've been prey to it for all she cared."

"Mhmm."

"So why did she take it into her coat?"

"She said something to the effect of, 'All living things deserve to be treated with kindness'. And then the snake bit her."

"And what if I told you that snake bite was precisely what neutralized the effects of the Ragnite Gas that Imperial forces deployed against her just seconds later?"

"I…"

Was that really true? Did shit even _work like that?_ She saw the little smile spreading over the Lieutenant's lips, and let out a chuckle.

"I'd say you were bullshitting me, Lieutenant."

"Regardless of whether or not the tale itself holds any truth to it, Naggiar Death Rattler venom _is_ a key component of the most commonly produced antidote for Ragnite Gas. My point, Ramona- is…"

He actually had to pause there, leaning back a bit in his chair with that smile still working on his face. Ramona couldn't help but mirror it. She had to give credit where it was due, he sure had a way of plugging those nature talks.

"Just because those mercenaries are dangerous, doesn't mean they can't help us. And that we can't help them. I understand your concerns, and I'm not expecting you to trust them so easily. Just… trust me, alright? Trust your comrades, trust that they'll watch your back. We're all in this together."

…

He had a point, she supposed; there were only four of the mercs, and... well, a lot more than four of them. She didn't exactly have the full roster on hand.

...

The lamp hanging overhead felt almost hypnotic, with how it blurred her vision to everything. She shut her eyes, and almost immediately found herself lapsing into the urge to go to sleep. Which she supposed could be considered a big improvement over just sitting all wide-eyed back in her foxhole.

She blew out a sigh, leaning back in her chair.

Maybe it wasn't the craziest idea the Lieutenant had. Still topped Vasel, if only because of long-term implications, but... well, he knew what he was doing. That was why he was a Lieutenant and she just a Private, right?

"Alright Lieutenant. I trust you."

"Thank you, Ramona."

"Nah," she groaned, stretching as she stood up. "Thank you. Sir." She snapped off a salute, as crisp as she could muster with a still-soaking wet poncho draped over her shoulders and no fucking boots on at least.

He nodded at her. The smile slowly fell off his face though, and he addressed her one last time before dismissing her. "You really should get some rest while you can though. I can't say much but… it's going to be a tough day tomorrow."

And then went back to his paperwork.

She made towards the door, half-expecting him to maybe say something else to see her off- but of course he didn't. That was Lieutenant Gunther, after all.

She drew in a deep breath. "Will do Lieutenant. I'll keep what you said in mind."

Ramona peeked down at her wristwatch on her way out, barely awake at this point, but damned if she didn't really care about that at the moment. 4:10AM. If she hurried, she might still be able to grab… a half hour of sleep before the wake-up call came, she guessed.

Half hour of sleep was better than none.

 **0-0-0**

' _-rains in the South-'_

' _-the Regular Army's advance being apparently partially redirected towards_ _the Eastern Front, under the direction of General Von Damon-'_

' _-because anybody's surprised that fat bastard'll actually buckle up and face the enemy where there's fighting to be had, eh? Hah! Telling you folks, when we lose this war, there's really only one person you can blame-'_

' _-the road conditions-'_

' _-yourself! You let this happen! You-'_

' _-I don't really know what's gonna happen, honestly. I mean, back in Vasel, it was… terrifying. Horrifying, really. They gave me a rifle but I wanted to be a medic, they still said they needed more guns. But there was… something-'_

' _-worth-'_

' _-fighting-'_

' _-for-'_

' _-not the pigfuck aristocracy-'_

' _-not for glory-'_

' _-not for the men, women, and children lost in years long before-'_

' _-but-'_

' _-YOU!'_

' _Until then, stay tuned, citizens, we'll have plenty of reports coming in from our frontline correspondent down in Kloden for you soon enough. This is-'_


	20. 20 Declassification

**Really big exposition dump I've been hoping to avoid incoming :S**

 **0-0-0**

He opened his eyes to a bleary haze, the dim glare shrouding that boy standing in the distance. Limply hunching over in the shadow of two broken windmills, and yet rising beyond the clouds at the same time.

He rubbed at his eyes with his free hand, as though the nerveless touch of that synthetic cloth would sand away the clots of obscuring… dimness. He wasn't sure how else to describe it.

The little doll clutched in his hands seemed to disagree. "Come on, Friedrich. You know you can do it."

Friedrich. Yes, that… that was, his name.

He looked down at the doll in his hands, the figure having morphed into a strange-looking bundle of matted fur. A pair of brown eyes stared back at him where he was used to seeing flat buttons, rounded hazel smoothed over with care. A full and rounded lump of something protruding from where its mouth should've been. A soft, discolored little snout.

A Teddy Bear.

It was missing an arm.

No, not missing. He remembered where it was, where it had been, clinging to the side of his rifle before he brushed it off-

" _Where's my rifle?"_ Friedrich rasped.

The armless toy in his hands slumped back into silence, its eyes dimming into charcoal.

He remembered the room, the tattered drapes billowing in the rain. The Cuckoo's nest, the bodybags- where were they?

He glanced around, tried to find some semblance of his surroundings in the misty haze.

There was a faint rumbling in the distance, the pounding heartbeat of encroaching footsteps. A great shadow soon fell over him.

The pounding in his chest intensified, his gaze not even turning upwards to meet the palm quickly reaching down for him. His grip tightened on the only thing he could anchor his fingers on, his eyes turning down towards the Teddy Bear in his hand.

" _Wake up,"_ he whispered, as though it would be enough to wake the furry apparition. As though his voice, rapidly fading into a mechanical wisp, would be enough to bring it back.

It wasn't. The thing's arm unravelled in his fingers as it tumbled down into the pile of dolls by his boots, the raggedy, uniform things, holes drilled into their heads.

His hands were empty again.

His chest tightened, as though to try and still the light twitching that had suddenly overtaken his fingers.

" _Wake up."_

He turned around, as the hand fell over him, blotting him out, fingers wrenching, grasping at the seals welded into his face.

 **0-0-0**

 _Friedrich is dead._

The Corporal awoke to a light smattering of raindrops coating his eyes, and the faint, dark blue hues of the clouded skies above. He laid there for a moment more, watching water droplets condense on his lenses as he steadied his uneven breathing. He felt one of them gently slip down his cheek.

" _You're awake."_

Yes, he was. He wasn't entirely sure why the Captain saw the need to personally acknowledge it, but the tone in his voice seemed to suggest he yet expected an answer from the Corporal. And so the Corporal complied.

"Yes Captain."

It took a few moments more to make out the tangle of branches hanging overhead, snaking through his muddled view of the sky. They rattled about ever so slightly, water slipping off of little leaf-dots sparsely populating the gnarly fingers.

He diverted his gaze quickly, easing his head down to find the Captain fiddling with his assault rifle already. The Sergeant and Lieutenant were only distinguishable from the Captain in being that they were silent and ever so slightly slumping from their still postures. A few moments later he noticed that the leftmost figure seemed to be carrying the yet-to-be repaired radio set on their back- the Lieutenant had slumped forward ever so slightly, the antennae protruding from the aforementioned radio readily evident. That left the Sergeant on the right. He guessed they were both still sleeping.

A sharp, mechanical sound brought his attention back around to the middle.

The Captain didn't return his glance, gaze held down while he went about inserting a boxy clip of bullets into its place on the side of his rifle, an open, faded blue box of ammo sitting between his legs. The Corporal only caught glimpses of the brass casings underneath the Captain's arms as he worked over the box- likely trying to at least partially shield it from the rain.

" _Tracer rounds,"_ said the Captain, seeming to sense the Corporal's gaze. _"Probably so they can actually keep track of their shots in an extended firefight. Goes both ways though. We're all gonna have to pick our shots more carefully than before."_

The Captain set aside his weapon, picking out an apparently empty clip from his waist belt and extracting a lengthy belt of bullets from the box- it made a faint jingling sound, bringing back blurred visions of frosted window glass- before nudging the open box towards the Corporal.

" _Your rifle's out in the middle there, under the tarp. I think they dropped off that pistol you picked off the Imp too."_

The Corporal sat for a moment longer, eyes tracing down the Captain's hunched form to the ammo box sitting out in the rain, the uncovered bullets inside, to the lumped-up tarp sitting in the centre of the squad's tight confines. He found himself trying to recall how it had ended up there, trying to recall when that had happened the past night. Tried to focus through the muffled tapping of water on his helmet, the water-warped filter he watched everything through.

There was his rifle. Under the tarp. Pistol too.

Was he still dreaming?

He tested his shoulder, lightly rolling around the fibres under the armor for any sign of the sharp pinpricks from the day before. He let a breath seep out when nothing came.

One breath. New day.

Friedrich was dead, that whole Imperial patrol was dead, and now the squad- _his_ squad- was stranded. He blinked, but it was soon clear that that wouldn't change anything anymore.

" _What are you waiting for? Load up."_

The Corporal loaded up.

 **0-0-0**

" _Did you clean out your mask filters?"_

He glanced up at the Captain, dried blood clotting his teeth and seeming to lock his tongue in place. No. He hadn't.

" _Here,"_ the Captain said, moving for the first time in what felt like an eternity, rifling through a pouch obscured by all the black cloth and armor on his hip and extracting an equally black boxy object before offering it out to the Corporal. The Captain's black fingers quite expertly obscured what the thing was supposed to be.

The Corporal set his rifle aside, reached out and accepted the object with a tentative hand. He brought it close to his mask, round red eyes futilely squinting against their synthetic frame as though to try and discern what the uniform, thin strands of more black lining the object's surface were for.

" _It's a brush, Corporal. Clean out your filters with it, it's all we got."_

"Like a toothbrush, Captain?"

He wasn't sure where that had come from, but it earned him a chuckle in response. _"Yeah. A toothbrush."_

So the Corporal brushed his teeth.

 **0-0-0**

Light was beginning to slowly bleed into skies above, the void of dark blue giving way to an unbroken grey palette. He could almost start to make out the greens dotting his surroundings.

He sat with his rifle in his lap, one hand curled around its frame. It didn't quite feel right, still. But it was at least something for him to steady himself on.

One breath. Two. Sporadic raindrops continued to tap on his helmet scalp, but the sensation of it was slowly becoming numb, becoming something that just blended in with everything else, becoming something that wasn't really meant to be noticed.

A new day.

" _Well? Any questions, Corporal?"_

The Captain's voice took him by surprise, throwing the mental counter ticking away in his head abruptly off track. He supposed that the counter reset itself wasn't much of an uncommon occurrence, but the sudden interjection of static-garbled speech into the grey silence of everything certainly was.

His eyes focused in on the Captain's armored figure sitting across from him, dulled red discs glaring blankly back at his own.

" _I said we could discuss more in the morning last night. If you've anything you want to ask, there's no better time."_

The Corporal blinked.

He tried to trace back to last night's occurrences again, the revelation that they were stranded, their weapons being dropped off-

-ah, yes. He'd figured the Captain had been more addressing the Sergeant and Lieutenant.

"I don't have any questions."

The Captain didn't break his gaze- for a moment, the Corporal wondered if he'd mistakenly identified the figure in front of him as the Captain, perhaps it was either the Sergeant or Lieutenant, still sleeping with how it didn't move at all.

But he'd seen the figure moving earlier before, and its assault rifle resting propped up against the dirt wall next to it.

He felt his heart thumping in his chest, one-two intervals passing by in the void of silence.

It wasn't the first time the Captain had taken so long to respond, he supposed.

" _You really just don't give a shit, do you?"_

The thumping sound faded away. He lost track of his breaths.

"I-"

"' _Don't understand?' You don't care? Just going to keep following orders, no matter how aimless or bullshit they're gonna get? Is that all you fucking know?"_

There'd always been an edge to the Captain's voice he used to pick out, every so often. Something a little off. This was… this was like that. But more, pronounced.

He could feel the strange, numbing sensation rushing through his body, coiling up with that raising voice, that tone, that mannerism of speech.

Yes. That was all he knew- he wanted to say that, but even his voice didn't seem able to respond anymore.

" _I'd figured you were a plant from Command at first you know, someone to keep tabs on us and make sure we didn't deliver late on another operation. Watch us for 'proper procedure', signs of dissention. That's why I had the Lieutenant set up a separate comm channel for just us and the Sergeant."_

…

So that explained why they always seemed so quiet at times. Talking amongst themselves?

It was hard to tell just how oftentimes during those extended silences that were talking and not actually just opting to remain quiet. They didn't seem too keen on talking even with each other from what he'd seen.

A sigh- the Captain's, but the Corporal yet remained tense.

" _But I guess you're just the latest breed of wind-up soldiers to roll off their assembly line. Helmet screwed on tighter than your fucking head is."_

Off the assembly line. No. He did understand, that much at least.

The Captain finally budged, slumping back against the wall ever so slightly and angling his head up into the sky.

It took another few moments of silence for some semblance of feeling to return to the Corporal's body- if a 'wind-up' soldier comprised of just armor plating such as him even had a body. Incorporeal fibres shifting deep inside, finally working a breath out to the scrubbed teeth of his mask.

Questions? He suppose he did have one question. It took a moment for the Corporal to remember, from the day before- Fhirald, Imperial invasion. Why the Captain had gone into such seeming detail about the entire ordeal.

Maybe it was some sudden clarity from having such an overwhelming numbness rush in and promptly leave his not-body- maybe from seeing the Captain react so jarringly. But he remembered where he'd heard the name before, Fhirald. His Spotter had mentioned it once before as well. Out on the concrete, the desolate waste of a shattered mansion foundation out in the countryside. The Corporal had quickly asked back then too, when he heard the name slip, 'what happened in Fhirald?'

He was quickly told to never ask about what happened in Fhirald. So he hadn't.

 _There's no better time._

"What happened in Fhirald, Captain?"

For a moment, it seemed as though the Captain wasn't going to answer- silence reigned over their communication channel, and his figure didn't budge. Maybe he'd fallen asleep again.

Maybe the Corporal would've preferred that- then maybe he could've gone back to sleep himself, forgotten about everything, and woken up later to find that nothing had needed to change after all, the shadowy hand reaching down and stifling all these troubling thoughts.

" _Fhirald was where it all started,"_ the Captain said at last, his voice falling back into its usual, monotone pitch over the static. The Captain trailed off, and the Corporal wondered if that was as much as he was going to get. He might well have been content with not following with more questioning, to be honest.

He didn't have to muse over it for long.

" _Nobody ever talks about the first wave of troopers to hit the field- the ones fresh out the academy, thinking they're all rushing forward to glory and conquest. Armed with new-age weapons, shining armor reminiscent of older times."_

The Captain was still staring into the sky, raindrops collecting on his red eyelenses.

" _I don't even remember which battalion I was in. They just called it The First, or something- first in the Imperial army to have the honor of fucking everything up, first to die."_

So the Captain had actually been there. Under the Empire.

" _Honestly, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We marched into a killzone, still in perfect square formation, rank and file- the Fhirald army didn't have much, sure, but even they'd invested in machine guns by then."_

The Corporal's thoughts turned to the Sergeant's weapon underneath the tarp, the cloth-tearing stream of bullets, the panicked chatter of the Imperial soldiers over the radio.

" _So, yeah. First day of one of the quickest and smoothest invasions in recent Imperial military history, and the whole battalion was almost wiped out. One company almost got rolled over by friendly artillery fire cuz the goddamn crews didn't know how to operate the things properly yet."_

…

Friedrich, Walther, Michaela, Erich-

-it would've been just like that, wouldn't it?

" _You ever heard of General Gregor, Corporal?"_

"No Captain, I haven't."

" _Doesn't really matter now, I guess. Imperial General- he showed up a few days after, while most of the survivors were still in the field hospitals. He was sent there to get our shit together, and get the other CO out. Pretty quickly rounded up the 'able-bodied' for an immediate follow-up offensive. I'd been considered one of the lucky ones, got out with a concussion- or something. Can't fucking remember. Me- the Sergeant, Lieutenant- all of us just Privates back then, mind you- about 200 other men, only ones left from the original first wave, got folded into some reinforcements the General brought along. Got sent back in. Same deal, square formations. Truckloads of casualties, total rout. The Sergeant took some shrapnel to his thigh but that got patched up easily enough. Lieutenant and I got out without a scratch."_

There was a pause, and the Corporal suddenly realized this might've been the longest he'd ever heard the Captain talkon end for. It was… strange. Moreso just how rapt with attention he was, not just out of obligation of following orders anymore.

" _The General watched it, listened to it, every movement, every bit of scrambled comm chatter over our mess of a radio network. He picked out all the faults, came to us in the field hospitals, ran through it all. Rewrote the tactics books on the spot, scrapped the ranks and files, scrapped the cavalry and gave them rifles, drilled us on radio discipline, had the artillery fire in prolonged barrages before we went in to soften up the enemy. And it worked- next thing we knew, we were rolling over the countryside, shooting up farmhouses, shooting up resistance fighters- that's a nicer way of saying we shot a lotta civilians, by the way. Most of the troopers didn't care anymore. A lot were just shooting anything not in an Imperial uniform, there was always some hometown hero ready to drop a live grenade down your bunk if your company ran the risk of staying in a local town. Then Command showed up."_

…

" _They've got a name, y'know, though I'm not surprised they don't go by it these days. Kerberos- some kind of, Watchdog in religious scripture or something. Fitting name, they were some sort of Imperial society that dealt with the acquisition and preservation of ancient relics with religious importance. Lots of researchers, lots of labcoats- amongst some other crazies. It's where all this,"_ he said, tapping on his mask, _"came from."_

…

He remembered the Lieutenant mention something about local folklore and religion before, back in Bruhl. With no small amount of disdain as well. He wondered if it had anything to do with Command- Kerberos.

"Religious importance?"

" _That's what they said, yeah,"_ responded the Captain, though betraying no opinion on the matter as he droned on with his usual tone of voice. He supposed it didn't matter. Orders were orders. And that was apparently all the Corporal knew.

" _They showed up in Fhirald a few weeks later, around the time you had troopers that couldn't quite cope with it all hanging themselves. Command requested an entire veteran battalion for a 'mission of utmost importance'- just so happened that word of our battalion morale was getting around, and some higher ups figured it would be a reasonable excuse to get us off the frontlines in a bid for PR when we were all so knee-deep in it it was all we knew at that point. I think those of us that were still alive at that time couldn't care enough to object, and just went along with it. They replaced us pretty easily as it was."_

...

" _Long story short, we ended up occupying a small border town for a bit. Most of the civilians were alive for a change, and nobody tried to kill us- Command just dumped us off to 'keep watch', went looking for whatever the hell it was they were looking for nearby in the meantime."_

 _..._

 _"I'm still not really sure what it was they found- but whatever it was, it was enough to make them schism from the Empire. No formal resignation or anything, no need I guess. That never was their style."_

 _..._

 _..._

 _"We were just starting to get used to the peace and quiet when they came back, trucks in tow, not saying a thing about what they had- just another set of orders, wipe out the town, and follow them. No witnesses, you know the drill. It wasn't until almost a week later that we realized we weren't even going back to the Empire anymore."_

It sounded as though the Captain never knew much more of Command than the Corporal did. Or… cared, for that matter.

"You followed orders."

The Captain shifted his gaze back down, held the Corporal's own. He couldn't see anything past the dull eyelenses.

" _They didn't give a shit about us."_

…

" _General Gregor didn't give a shit about us, the Empire never gave a shit about us, Gallia sure as hell won't- nobody gives a shit about us, Corporal. About you, me, the Sergeant, the Lieutenant. We've been cannon fodder, expendable assets 'just following orders' ever since day one- the 'First',"_ he finished, still maintaining that droning monotone.

" _Following orders isn't going to cut it when nobody's there to look out for you. When nobody cares about you."_

So if that was the case, why had the Captain bothered to intervene when he'd been pinned down by the Gallians? Why had he told him to run and abandon them even before that?

"But you care."

 _Somebody had to._

…

" _I'm not gonna be around forever, Corporal. I can't just keep throwing orders around and expect us all to come out alive."_

There was a rousing, a light scraping of metal on metal- the Corporal looked to the Captain's sides, and noticed that both the Sergeant and Lieutenant had awoken, their dull red eyes staring at him.

" _You're gonna have to learn to care for yourself soon enough, because we're going back into the meatgrinder."_

The pitter-patter of rain went on for a long time after that.


	21. Chapter 21

It wasn't until they were already being led back through the tunnels by Wulfstan that the Sergeant broke the silence.

" _Hey, Corporal."_

The words lingered in the void under his helmet for a good few footsteps, his dulled senses sluggishly firing up again when he realized the words were addressed to _him._

He blinked, and realized that the armored figure ahead of him had ever so slightly angled their blank gaze back towards him, peering over the machine gun slung over its shoulder.

"Yes, Sergeant?"

The Sergeant hadn't slowed in his march. The Corporal, despite keeping his gaze straight, was finding it hard to do the same.

" _Just checking in on you. You've been pretty twitchy ever since we set foot in this camp yesterday."_

They were coming up on a corner. The Corporal could see the figures ahead of the Sergeant already rounding it, a bare glimpse of their outlines passing by on his left.

"I'm fine now, Sergeant."

The answer seemed satisfactory enough for the Sergeant to set his gaze straight again- the Corporal figured that would be the end of it, but barely another footstep after he followed the Sergeant around the corner, the Sergeant's voice was ringing in his helmet again.

" _You don't seem 'fine' to any of us."_

If he were to be honest with himself, he didn't feel fine either. His body had stabilized itself- the throbbing in his shoulder was gone, his fingers could remain still now that his rifle was slung over his shoulder, and his breathing had receded back to its old raspy silence that he paid no heed to- but it was hard to pretend everything was 'fine' when every inch of what he could see outside of his squad was just...

...well, right now it was just a lot of dirt, the occasional door, and lamps.

" _Don't get me wrong, we're all pretty fucked in the head ourselves- but there's a certain point where we've gotta start wondering if the guy we're trusting to watch our backs is gonna lose it out here in the field."_

…

" _That means you, Corporal."_

"I know."

He began to pick up other voices starting to drift down the winding caves, most of them familiar from the night before, despite the distance.

" _I know the Captain was going on about some stuff earlier. Don't think too much on it. Just keep it together- like you were before all this- and you'll be fine."_

"That doesn't sound like what he meant." The words spilled out from his teeth before he could think them over. The Sergeant seemed less surprised than he was.

" _And you know what he meant?"_

He waited, tongue numb, as though the right answer would just come on its own again. A few footsteps later the distant voices grew closer, and his own voice remained quiet.

"No. I don't."

Their walk through the tunnels finally came to a halt, a door barely visible to the Corporal past the various figures standing in front of him. Muffled voices from behind briefly became clear as a thin, bold ray of light peeked out from behind the Sergeant.

"Wait here," he heard Wulfstan murmur to the rest of them before the light flickered out and the voices beyond the door slipped back into obscurity.

The Sergeant peered around back to him again.

" _Just stay alive. Help keep us alive. Anything else- orders, feelings, whatever- that don't directly contribute to that are secondary. That's all it really boils down to right now."_

"What about the Gallians? Aren't we following _their_ orders now?"

He received a chuckle in response. It left him with an uncomfortable chill.

" _That remains to be seen."_

…

" _But right now, they're not shooting at us. And as long as it's the Captain, not me, dealing with them, I'd rather not have them start shooting at us."_

'The Captain'.

The Sergeant had always seemed ready to challenge the Captain. He could at least remember the Sergeant's adamant opposition to _this_ whole idea- and it only made him wonder how much of it he hadn't heard, if the squad still discussed amongst themselves on their own radio channel.

" _We work with them, they don't try to kill us. Simple enough."_

The voices behind the door were starting to escalate- he strained his ears more, and could vaguely pick out the two Gallian Lieutenants' voices dominating. It didn't sound like they were going to be quieting down anytime soon.

He looked up, noticing the Sergeant had returned to his normal, front-facing posture.

"What…" He caught himself this time, mind inspecting the words churning out his voice-machine before they could roll off his tongue as though it were ready to scold him…

He ended up trailing off as he looked up, meeting the Sergeant's gaze. He leaned to the side, trying to see if he had suddenly caught the attention of the Lieutenant and Captain now too- he hadn't even considered they might've been listening in the whole time earlier. It hadn't mattered much then, but now…

The Sergeant continued to eye him silently, and the voices behind the door continued to battle away.

He took in a breath.

"What do you think about the Captain?"

The pause between his question and the Sergeant's response was shorter than he was expecting.

" _That's a pretty broad question,"_ the Sergeant said, resettling his gaze on the Lieutenant's back again.

A few moments thumped by before he continued. He spoke softly, funnily with none of the vitriol that seemed to so often lace his voice when he actually spoke _to_ the Captain. _"He'll do what it takes to keep us alive. Us, that is, including you."_

The Sergeant sounded sincere- and the Captain had certainly proved that much about the Sergeant's claim before.

And yet, as the Corporal thought back to the events of the previous day- the Gallian militia personnel, all their bustle and boisterous chatter- he found himself strangely dissatisfied by the Sergeant's hanging silence after that.

He heard the Captain's voice in his head again, some words from yesterday's blurred speech becoming clear. He heard the exhaustion in them, the frustration. His mind wandered even further back, recalling the long pauses that had pockmarked the Captain's orders, the empty gaze of his staring off into nothing for moments too long.

And then he heard Lieutenant Gunther's voice from beyond the door, the fervor driving his shapeless words. That familiar surge of energy the Corporal also heard last night, when the Gallian Lieutenant had vouched for them all.

...

"Do you really think he can do that? Keep us all alive?"

...

The Captain didn't seem to think so in the morning.

…

So why was he even asking?

The Sergeant sighed.

" _No, Corporal. That's why we need you to start pulling your own weight. That's what we've been trying to get through to you."_

…

 _"Fuck me, I guess we were always pretty bad at talking this kinda shit out. You understand now though, don't you?"_

He blinked, and finally started to see the dents and scratches that criss-crossed the surfaces of his squad's armored skin exposed under the dim lamplight. He started to notice that the Sergeant leaned on his right leg ever so slightly more than his left. It was so subtle he wouldn't have noticed had he not remembered the Captain mentioning the Sergeant had been wounded in one leg in Fhirald. He saw the radio on the Lieutenant's back, drawing a visceral mosaic with its twisted innards tenderly and futilely arranged into a uniform pattern that would not hold. And the Captain just stared forward, unmoving.

 _'Lost yourself?'_

"I understand."

" _Glad to hear it."_

The Sergeant sounded anything but glad.


End file.
